There’s been a lot of talk over the past 20 years about evidence-based design. EBD is the idea that improvements to the design of buildings, particularly to their interior spaces—more daylight, improved air quality, better lighting—can have a positive effect on human health and performance.
The problem with EBD is that it’s very hard to conduct truly rigorous scientific studies on humans. Was it the improved lighting that enabled students to boost their test scores, or was it better airflow in the classroom? Did that hospital patient heal more quickly because she had a window with a view to the outside, or was she just a fast healer? Too many variables, not enough controls, so it’s anybody’s guess how much, if anything, the design contributed to the outcome.
The Mayo Clinic and Delos, the developer of the Well Building Standard, have teamed up to bridge this information gap. They have built a 7,500-sf laboratory at Mayo’s Rochester, Minn., campus, where researchers will perform sophisticated, reproducible (that’s important) scientific studies on design’s impact on human health and performance. The goal, according to Delos COO Peter Scialla, is to expand the concept of environmental sustainability to embrace what he calls “biological sustainability.”
The Well Living Lab, designed by Centerbrook Architects & Planners (with Knutson Construction as CM), has six experimental modules that can be formed into a variety of indoor spaces: an open-plan or closed office floor, a kitchen, a hotel or hospital room, a classroom, etc. The walls, floors, ceilings, fixtures, and plumbing—yes, even the plumbing—can be completely reconfigured.
The Well Living Lab has six experimental modules that can be formed into a variety of indoor spaces, including an office, kitchen, and hotel room.
The modules, as well as the furniture, casework, and finishings, are loaded with sensors so that test subjects’ responses can be captured without having to attach wire leads to them. For example, bed sensors will determine a person’s lying-down position and how much pressure is being exerted on specific body parts—information that one day could lead to ways to relieve bed sores in long-term hospital patients, or just give weary hotel guests a better night’s sleep.
In certain studies participants will wear sensor-enabled wristbands or clothing to gauge heart rate, galvanic skin response, motion, skin and near-body temperature, respiration, and physical posture.
Sensors embedded in walls, ceilings, appliances, and fabrics will measure factors like sound, street noise, room temperature, humidity, air particulates, and light (including spectral power density). High-definition cameras will zoom in on test subjects to record facial expressions and gestures.
Research experiments will test the effect of single or multiple variables, such as air quality, supplied lighting, and daylighting, on subjects’ stress, fitness, nutrition, eating habits, performance in cognitive and physical skills, and sleep. Further down the line, building product manufacturers may be able to use the lab to test the efficacy of their products on human health. All this activity will be managed and documented from a high-tech control room.
The Well Living Lab is an important breakthrough in environmental design. If it lives up to even a fraction of its promise, it could provide designers of hospitals, outpatient medical facilities, schools, university classrooms, hotels, and office spaces with scientifically valid data to produce designs that really do contribute to human health and performance. Real science, not wishful thinking.
Experiments are scheduled to begin in the next couple of months, once the Well Living Lab has completed its break-in period.
Central control room
Sensors embedded in walls, ceilings, appliances, and fabrics measure factors like sound, street noise, room temperature, humidity, air particulates, and light.
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
Research Facility Breaks the Mold
In the market for state-of-the-art biomedical research space in Boston's Longwood Medical Area? Good news: there are still two floors available in the Center for Life Science | Boston, a multi-tenant, speculative high-rise research building designed by Tsoi/Kobus & Associates, Boston, and developed by Lyme Properties, Hanover, N.
| Aug 11, 2010
3 Hospitals, 3 Building Teams, 1 Mission: Optimum Sustainability
It's big news in any city when a new billion-dollar hospital is announced. Imagine what it must be like to have not one, not two, but three such blockbusters in the works, each of them tracking LEED-NC Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. That's the case in San Francisco, where three new billion-dollar-plus healthcare facilities are in various stages of design and constructi...
| Aug 11, 2010
Holyoke Health Center
The team behind the new Holyoke (Mass.) Health Center was aiming for more than the renovation of a single building—they were hoping to revive an entire community. Holyoke's central business district was built in the 19th century as part of a planned industrial town, but over the years it had fallen into disrepair.
| Aug 11, 2010
Right-Sizing Healthcare
Over the past 30 years or so, the healthcare industry has quietly super-sized its healthcare facilities. Since 1980, ORs have bulked up in size by 53%, acute-care patient rooms by 77%. The slow creep went unlabeled until recently, when consultant H. Scot Latimer applied the super-sizing moniker to hospitals, inpatient rooms, operating rooms, and other treatment and administrative spaces.
| Aug 11, 2010
Great Solutions: Healthcare
11. Operating Room-Integrated MRI will Help Neurosurgeons Get it Right the First Time A major limitation of traditional brain cancer surgery is the lack of scanning capability in the operating room. Neurosurgeons do their best to visually identify and remove the cancerous tissue, but only an MRI scan will confirm if the operation was a complete success or not.
