We spend 90% of our lives in buildings and 65% in our homes. As such, the impact that buildings have on our physical and mental wellbeing, though air quality, natural light, thermal comfort as well as the communities we live and work in and our relationship to nature, should not be underestimated.
This booklet is designed to illustrate how we have sought to address health and wellbeing issues across a range of projects. It begins and ends with Hospital projects, - one where research has shown that the building contributes to the success of the treatment, and one which is looking at improving the performance of one of our biggest London hospitals.
In between we look at a number of projects - housing, masterplanning, educational and commercial projects. Our research has shown that the relationship with nature and the development of a sense of community have had a strong impact on the success of housing projects. Post occupancy surveys of office buildings have proved the success of creating a healthy office environment. And we illustrate two out of the many creative reuse projects we have been involved with where sensitive upgrading of existing buildings have helped preserve social and working environments
Finally we also demonstrate by reference to our recently completed church at Stanbrook Abbey that architecture that is sensitive to the power of natural light can contribute we believe to the spiritual as well as the physical sense of wellbeing.