Well-Being in Practice and Policy

Recent research focuses on the concept of well-being, aiming to systematize it and obtain design guidelines. In latest years, various building certification systems have arisen, which, although used for ex post evaluations, contain, specularly, design guidelines. In a first phase the concept of well-being was intended on a global scale, linked to the pitfalls of pollution and consumption of resources, so design guidelines and control systems developed within the construction industry to ensure the conservation of the environment and therefore the “well-being” and “health” of human communities. Having therefore developed certification systems measuring and evaluating the performance of buildings in relation to their impact on the environment and its resources, we are now faced with a shift of attention on a smaller scale, linked to the performance that buildings offer not so much with respect to the environment as to the people who live in them. This chapter explores the concepts behind such systems and the relationship between building certification systems and people's well-being.