Designing for health and wellbeing: various concepts, similar goals

Abstract

The last decades show a growing interest in the impact of buildings, facilities and services on health and wellbeing. This paper aims to present different design concepts that have been developed to support health and wellbeing of the end users, such as healing environments and healthy offices, or to avoid negative impacts, such as the Sick Building Syndrome and toxic workplaces. Each concept is supported by a selection of references to available evidence of its influence. The paper is based on an extensive narrative literature review of buildings and facilities related publications on how to provide healthy environments, with a focus on offices and health care facilities. The discussed design concepts have much in common, but also different focus points, Overall it is shown that a variety of building design characteristics - spatial layout, indoor climate, interior design, finishing, contact with nature - affect the health and wellbeing of building users. Facilities such as desk bikes and plants and services such as healthy food and drinks or healthy behaviour stimulating programs have a positive impact as well. As a consequence, the design and management of healthy environments needs a multidisciplinary approach and collaboration between designers, corporate real estate and facility managers, human resource managers, IT specialists, and the involvement of different stakeholder such as clients and end users.