In recent years, there’s been a growing discussion among architects, designers, and engineers around the office environment and its impact on productivity and absenteeism. Indoor environmental quality factors such as views, daylighting, indoor air quality, and thermal comfort have all been shown to have significant positive impacts on employee health and performance. These design features should consistently be integrated in your workspace, focusing on strategies proven to improve the user experience and owner operations.
Here, we look at what the research says about these four major impact areas and explore design best practices to unlock the interrelated performance benefits of sustainable design.
Holistic and sustainable design brings together concepts that are intertwined and lead to a common goal of peak performance, creating an enhanced workplace. Image © DLR Group.
The sweet spot for sustainable design is finding overlapping concepts that enhance building operations, employee health and wellness, and community benefit through environmental stewardship and innovation. Image © DLR Group.
Views
Design publications and AEC firms alike espouse views: views of the city, views of the landscape, views of the clouds. But views are a scientifically legitimate design feature that can be applied in many of today’s renovated and newly constructed office buildings. Research that highlights the magnitude of the impact of views highlights a 10-15 percent reduction in absenteeism, improved sleep cycles, and lower markers of stress. Here, we share some more information about three of these research studies.
A 2011 study by Ihab Elzeyadi examined an open-plan office building at the University of Oregon where 30 percent of the offices overlooked trees and landscape; 31 percent overlooked a street, building, and parking lot; and 39 percent had no view. The study linked a 10 percent reduction in occupant sick days to both view of nature and exposure to daylight.
Sample Health Product Declaration Label from Declare. Image courtesy of International Living Future Institute.
In a 2010 study comparing an older workspace with limited access to windows reducing both daylight and views of nature, to a newer workspace with better views and increased exposure to daylight, psychologist Julian Thayer and his team found that workers in the new space had lower markers of stress, improved indicators of heart health, better sleep cycle, and lower stress outside of the workplace.
Research on views of nature and its effects on our attention span and mood conducted by Rachel and Stephen and Kaplan noted that nature seemed to have a variety of beneficial effects on human attention and focus, whether it was after a walk in a natural setting or just viewing nature through a window or in a photograph. They coined the term attention restoration theory (ART) to explain how, by providing biophilic images that only demand our “soft” or low-effort attention, nature helps to restore our focused, or effortful, attention.