Mindfulness, Biophilia and Salutogenesis: a powerful triptych for improving construction health and happiness

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Increasingly health is becoming a key aspect and driver for building design and maintenance. (See Next Wave of Design: Wellness-minded Spaces) OF note, are seeing a BREEAM alignment with WELL, but as pointed out in FutuREstorative, and by others, this approach needs to equally apply to the construction process, to project working environments, including project office accommodation. Mindfulness, Biophilia […]

Revolutionary, Regenerative Sustainability; RESTORE Training School

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The UK RESTORE Training School The first RESTORE Training School took place in Lancaster, UK between 14th and 17th November 2017 organised and facilitated by Martin Brown, Fairsnape. Over 40 trainees and RESTORE core group members attended, representing a great spectrum of sustainability disciplines, experience and EU countries. The four days were lead by trainers and guest lectures […]

Back to School with Restorative Sustainability

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What is Restorative Sustainability and why is Education so vital? Working with Class of your Own, it is a pleasure to be organising and directing the first Training School for the RESTORE Cost Action to be held in Lancaster, between 14th and 17th November 2017. The RESTORE Action aims at a paradigm shift towards restorative sustainability for new and […]

What hurts, what helps, what heals: the Built Environment and mental health.

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With respect to Mental Health Awareness Week, Erin Newton’s excellent article in UD/MH (Urban Design / Mental Health) caught my attention. Erin notes that the built environment can create and maintain risk factors for mental illness by stripping away protective factors for good mental health, for example through: Reducing access to nature Reducing opportunities for physical activity Overloading the […]

Healthy Buildings and Wellness: 12 Insights

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Alison Nicholls, Associate Director, Constructing Excellence, put together the following, excellent summary of the recent Heathy Buildings and Wellness event held on the 31st January 2017. The event was hosted Aecom at their Aldgate Tower offices, designed to meet the very latest standards in healthy buildings and wellness. The business case behind healthy buildings and investing in standards […]

Talking, Sharing, Launching

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My 2017 diary is shaping up with some great and exciting presentations & talks, sharing insights from FutuREstorative, introducing the Living Building Challenge, launching more collaboratives in the UK and launching RESTORE, our European COST restorative sustainability research programme. And more… Jan 11th Preston Sharing insights from FutuREstorative, Living Building Challenge along with healthy buildings topics such […]

WELL & BREEAM announce alignment for credits: more good or less bad?

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UPDATE 01 Feb 2017 Credit Crosswalks: BRE and IWBI have released guidance to streamline joint certification of BREEAM and WELL …. As mentioned and illustrated in FutuREstorative, we will see an alignment in building sustainability and performance standards over coming months and years. In the US we have seen an alignment between LEED and the Living Building […]

Quartz: healthy product datasets for BIM?

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When we know what our buildings are made of, we can make informed choices by selecting materials that are healthier for occupants and have a lesser impact on our environment* This blog regularly covers the intersection between sustainable, healthy products (for example the Living Building Challenge Red List) and BIM. Indeed the selection of materials […]

Wellness and Happiness: The Next Built Environment / CSR Frontier

Update 30/11/16 BREEAM and WELL Alignment review – more good or less bad? Update 27/10/14: The International WELL Building Institute launched the WELL Building Standard Version 1.0, as a publicly available standard which focuses on enhancing people’s health and well-being through the built environment, at the inaugural WELL Building Symposium in New Orleans. The WELL Building Standard v1.0 can be […]

Living Building Challenge 3.0 Released

International Living Future Institute refines and upgrades the building certification program to raise the bar even higher for restorative design. PORTLAND, Ore. — May 22, 2014 —The International Living Future Institute™ today released the next iteration of the Living Building Challenge. Widely considered the built environment’s most rigorous performance standard, Living Building Challenge, the 3.0 version […]