A sensor-control report on a computer screen at Zaha Hadid Architects. PHOTO: ALI KATE CHERKIS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
If you have ever yearned to work aboard the Starship Enterprise, take comfort: The newest office buildings have more in common with spaceships than you realize.
It isn’t just Apple’s new campus, either. As work takes an ever more central place in our lives, engineers, architects and scientists are beginning to view our workplaces as sealed structures that must actively manage their internal environments, while mitigating pollution and other hazards that are the cost of doing business in many of the world’s most economically productive cities.
Big cities such as Beijing, Los Angeles, London and Nairobi regularly experience air so bad their citizens are warned to stay indoors. Office buildings with sealed windows are now the norm, but that can lead to other health hazards. For instance, volatile organic compounds, emitted from furniture and carpets, combine with the carbon dioxide we exhale to create an environment that has the potential to make us sleepy and dimwitted.