Our buildings can help or hinder our health and productivity. For example, we may be affected by daylight passages, air quality, natural connections and acoustics. Most complaints about space – about temperature, noise, strange smells and even the degree of exposure we feel – are related to these factors.
“People-oriented design” and “healthy” buildings are the latest buzzwords in the built environment. People-oriented design is not a new concept; this is why products such as smartphones are intuitive and designed around a seamless user experience.
However, if you use Google Framework images, people (users) are almost always missing. A professional photographer frankly explained this to me:
People are not the ones who win awards.
When we design buildings and infrastructure, users are not in the center. So, are we wasting millions of dollars on traditional buildings that are beautiful but useless?
As healthy physical environmental science becomes mainstream, the focus on users will become more important. People know more about the impact of the built environment on their health than ever before.
Watch outside the upscale office space
Initiatives like the WELL Building are gaining a foothold in the high-end market in the office market. But we can’t forget other departments, such as schools, universities, aged care, homes and junior offices.
For example, universities own and occupy large building portfolios. In Australia, they spent $10.6 billion on real estate in the three years from 2011 to 2013.
Employing more than 100,000 employees and enrolling more than 1.4 million students, how do they know if their building investment really has a positive impact on their employees?
From linear to closed loop
The key obstacle is the linear nature of the building process. After the construction, we rarely went back to measure whether the building is working well.
This requires some form of post-stay assessment, which is often used in academic research but rarely used in practice. There is usually a “performance gap” because buildings operate differently in real life than designs on paper.
The reason for not returning is usually related to the cost and transfer of the contractor to another job. No one wants to know what is wrong with the building after completion – which means that responsibility must be pursued.
For the user, what if the temperature is not comfortable? Still too noisy? Or is it a headache because of poor ventilation and work elsewhere?
Here are some comments on the post-check-in assessment of the new building:
A lot of daylighting, but it causes glare, so the blinds are falling most of the time.
Lighting control is a mystery… don’t stay, the sensor doesn’t seem to work.
I really like open plans, but we need more privacy.
It’s hard to focus on high-level tasks, very noisy.
There was a strange smell in the morning (from the carpet).
Without these feedbacks, how can we improve existing and future buildings?
Diversification of human needs
What attracts you to one space, but excludes you from another space?
Usually we assume that the user needs to get something from space, which is not always correct.
Adhering to the role model of the university, the student experience is the primary task of the organization. It is measured by rankings such as the Australian Study and Teaching Quality (QILT) survey.
In QILT, “learning resources” (teaching spaces, public spaces, laboratories, and libraries) scored relatively well, both above 70% satisfaction (note – this is a very common rating). However, in the last year of the study, the satisfaction of all these spaces declined.
Digging deeper into “learner participation”, the score is lower: “46% of the interaction with students in the learning requirements”, “the interaction with students is very different from themselves” accounted for 52%, in the “a sense of belonging” 52%. Overall, international students scored only 28% of learner engagement (compared to 66% of domestic students).
I have seen many buildings that seem to be isolated, and QILT shows that health and stress are the number one reason students consider leaving college.
Can space promote better care and contact?
Let the user drive the design
In addition to simple comfort parameters, we must also consider cultural differences (especially if trying to attract a mix of international students), comfort requirements, learning needs, disability issues, etc.
The University of Adelaide Student Center is an interesting example of a people-centered “sticky” design. Students and the university have created this space together. Full-time managers with a customer service background are now responsible for managing and constantly adapting highly flexible spaces to meet the needs of students.
Trends affect the design of buildings. It is lazy to get successful designs from one industry and apply them directly to another industry that expects the same results. It may look good, but is it suitable for user needs? Is it healthy and practical?
To get the benefits of people-centered design, we need an industry that honestly values feedback and learns from existing spaces. The number of labor and sick leave costs – Australia’s $33 billion a year – is shocking. We can and must do more in all our buildings to curb these costs and create a healthy future.