Wellbeing fostered by design: a framework for evaluating indoor environment performance

Abstract

High-rise urban development has been controversial for its inability to foster cohesive and flourishing neighbourhoods. A social value perspective can help to better understand and evaluate how new developments in dense urban settings affect places and communities. While the link between wellbeing and social value is well-established in the literature, the question of how design can affect wellbeing and thus contribute to the social value of a development still requires further research and clarification. A better understanding of this relationship can assist architects, developers or consultants during the design process. A review is presented of relevant quantifiable aspects of building design that affect wellbeing in relation to the indoor environment and to social value specifically. A framework for fostering wellbeing is developed to test these aspects and evaluate the indoor environment performance. A case study building is used to analyse the relationship between building design and wellbeing. These lessons can be used to inform and evaluate building design during the design phases to complement the assessment of qualitative factors within a social value framework. Practice relevance This study identifies quantifiable aspects of the indoor environment affecting wellbeing in a high-rise development that can form part of a social value framework. This list of identified aspects provides a useful starting point for architects or consultants to assess designs. The indicators relate to quantifiable indoor environment aspects that can be directly controlled by building design and complement the broader concepts of wellbeing within a social value framework. The paper demonstrates how these aspects can be quantified in a case study mixed-use urban development as part of a post-occupancy evaluation. These quantifiable aspects could be integrated within digital tools to evaluate the building at the design stage to ensure that wellbeing is at the forefront of the project considerations.