Archinect - News

60 Minutes spotlights the importance of indoor air quality

2023-10-31T14:50:00-04:00

For the Harvard professor, founder of the university's Healthy Buildings Program, our building design and public health officials have ignored indoor air systems for too long – that is, until the COVID pandemic hit. [...] "If you look at the way we design and operate buildings –and I mean offices, schools, local coffee shop[s] – we haven't designed for health," Allen said. "We have bare minimum standards."

Professor Joe Allen, who also does consultation work for developers, recently advised on the Amazon ‘HQ2’ project in Virginia from NBBJ. He and his colleagues at Harvard’s Healthy Buildings Program center their work around six research areas (Homes, Schools, Business, Materials, Climate, and Infectious Diseases), noting that humans spend, on average, 90% of their lives indoors. The project leverages studies and empirical evidence that have roots in 19th-century public health design and is now being aided by research into the effects of ventilation on the spread of COVID-19.

"All else equal, which building are you gonna go to? You have your choice right now: This building that put in healthy building controls, or this building that's designed the way we've always designed buildings, and is prone to being a sick building?" Allen told 60 Minutes, speaking about post-pandemic market standards.

A list of tools and resources compiled for designers by the program can be found here.

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5 key drivers of the healthy building movement

2017-03-26T20:20:00-04:00

The wide-ranging efforts include improving indoor air quality and even increasing activity levels of building occupants. Allen and colleagues at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health have defined nine foundations for healthier buildings, such as better water quality, reducing noise, regulating temperature, and maximizing light.

As part of the Urban Expeditions series, Brian Howard explored some of the latest trends in green design, which go far beyond energy and water efficiency to issues of public health/wellness.

Google, Flux, Healthy Building Network and thinkstep launch Quartz database: a resource for comparing building material sustainability

2015-10-27T14:32:00-04:00

Choosing building materials is a delicate balance of factors – looks, quality, price, environmental impact and sustainability all contribute to the success and overall value of the product. When data about building materials are illegible or biased, the construction process can become convoluted and compromise the final structure, straining the architect’s role in the process.

Hoping to streamline and vet a resource for the overall health and utility of building materials, Google, Healthy Building Network (HBN), Flux, and thinkstep have formed The Quartz database: a place where AEC professionals as well as the general public can review a “common dataset” of building materials’ effects on both human and environmental health, ultimately to support a more sustainable built environment.

Born out of the year-old Quartz Project, which was (according to a Quartz press release) formed to “promote the transparency of building product information”, the Quartz database aims to create a new AEC i...