Recap Of The First Annual Design Well Conference In San Diego

Pre-Conference Workshop: Healthy Buildings and a Healthy Work-Life

Global Women for Wellbeing, a nonprofit founded two years ago by several women in the wellness and design industry, hosted a half-day hands-on workshop before the conference celebrating women leading in the design field. Participants included a mix of designers, workplace consultants, furniture dealers, and wellness experts hailing from as far as the Dominican Republic to Alaska.

The workshop was an opportunity for participants to share how health and wellbeing concerns are affecting work for clients as well as their personal life. Presentations and exercises addressed the “Superwoman Syndrome” (tendency for women to put pressure on themselves to be perfect in all aspects of their life, with little to no attention to self-care), and “The Power of Design and Diversity,” exploring the need for meaningful diversity in the industry. Just a few of the many juicy research articles referenced during the discussion are listed below:

• “A Next Step in Architecture’s #MeToo Movement: The Architecture Lobby’s Solidarity Bloc offers more than just solidarity. It offers the chance for a new job.”

• “Caregiving, Leadership and Financial Wellbeing: Connecting the Issues that Hold Women Back” GW4W whitepaper

• “Where are all the female architects?” New York Times

• “Diversity: The Business Advantage Best Practices for Gender Equity and Inclusion in Commercial Real Estate” CREW

• “Companies with Diverse Executive Teams Posted Bigger Profit Margins, Study Shows” Wall Street Journal

• “Early Benchmarks Show ‘Post-Millennials’ on Track to Be Most Diverse, Best-Educated Generation Yet” Pew Research Center

• “Diversity and Inclusion: The New Approach Needed to Avoid Cultural Irrelevance,” Design Intelligence

• Test your own biases with Harvard’s Project Implicit: Social Attitudes

“I really enjoyed the exercise of working in teams to discuss strategies to reduce stress. It initiated some great dialogue and also helped us realize that we are not alone in feeling pressured to do it all! We have the ability to redefine what it means to be ‘superwomen’ in our industry.”

“It focused on the power of women, how to be healthy and balancing life roles from a women’s perspective.  It was an experience listening to all these wonderful women and their stories of success, kids, and work.”

-Kathylka Gonzalez, Dominican Republic – Healthcare and Wellness Architect 

Design Well Conference: Themes and Take-aways

Presentations covered a wide range of topics including the current and growing health crisis, the market opportunity for buildings and design, biophilia, environmental psychology, healthy building certification updates, manufacturer labeling and many, many case studies!

Things you are strongly encouraged to check out:

• The XPRIZE for Healthy Buildings is a challenge to design teams to “grow a wall.” That’s right, you heard us. Hear from Eric Corey Freed and this amazing competition.

• Sally Augustin’s new book is Designology: How to Find Your PlaceType and Align Your Life With Design, written for designers AND their clients.

• Mindful Materials is a one stop shop to classifying the health and environmental impacts of products from leading manufacturers.

• MaterialsCAN is the Carbon Action Network that drives awareness to better understanding the importance of embodied carbon of specified materials.

• WELL v2 is out of pilot stage! Time to integrate into your projects.

• The American Society of Interior Design (ASID) headquarters, the first WELL and LEED Platinum Certified space, has plenty of juicy metrics and stories. Check out their research findings.

• Consider the neuro-diversity of our workforce and how to best accommodate those with Dyspraxia, Dyslexia, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Dyscalculia, Autistic Spectrum, Tourette Syndrome or other unique conditions. Kay Sargent reminded us of the size of this group and some of the ways to make this demographic more comfortable and effective in the workplace.