Beyond LEED: Wellness and the Urban Office
The COOKFOX Office was the first LEED Platinum office facility in New York City. But Platinum designation was just a starting point: the design also met the emerging WELL Building Standard and was awarded WELL Gold level certification in April 2018.
Looking beyond environmental sustainability and making buildings better for the environment to making buildings better for people, this program will discuss underlying motivations, concerns and methods for designing for WELL certification. Biophilia and wellness are leading conceptual frameworks in this evolution.
This moderated presentation and discussion will provide an explanation of the science of biophilia and introduce key concepts of human health and wellness linking advanced design with environmental sustainability. The COOKFOX office project will be explored as a case study to provide insight into design strategies, goals and achievements within the design, and the view from the client and designer.
Finally, a moderated panel discussion will explore the use of the WELL Building Standard as a framework and provide opportunity for audience interaction with the panelists.
- Describe how Biophilic design verifiably impacts human occupants.
- Identify human health, safety, and welfare considerations motivating efforts to move beyond narrowly focused 'environmental' design, toward design guided by evidence based methods concerned with human health.
- Summarize social, economic, and regulatory (eg building code compliance) responses engendered through application of Biophilic and WELL design frameworks in practice.
- Discuss practice-based considerations including economics, ethics, team coordination, construction administration, and legal/contractual concerns involved with advanced design and environmental sustainability.
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