WELL Building Standard
WELL is the first building standard focused in the health and wellbeing of the building occupants. In WELL, the built environment is the vehicle to improve occupant’s health and wellbeing rather than the pure engineering and architectural performance of the equipment and materials, and far beyond energy performance. WELL has a chapter fully dedicated to light, and one point that focuses in circadian lighting design. This is a new perspective for lighting design that involves not only the lighting systems, but also the architectural spaces, the people condition in terms of age, health and stress, and the activities that will take place at the spaces, together with time of day.
We will see an increasing demand in the field. As this is a multidisciplinary arena, architects, engineers, designers, health and wellness specialists, even cognitive and behavioral experts will need to interact and provide an integrated solution. Under my point of view the main change to happen is in procurement, where we will have to move from traditional utilities/MEP (mechanical, electrical, plumbing) to IT (information technologies). IT teams are ready to see the value, and to implement it.
They are also very familiar with the fields of user interface and user experience, critical aspects for the implementations of this technology in the real world. WELL compliance will have an impact in insurance policies, and this will be the real enabler to start monetizing real health and wellness practices into financials such as return on investment (ROI).