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I want you to take a moment and picture the place where you feel most alive.
The place where you feel energized, happiest, maybe in the zone.
Take a moment to look around your happy place.
And notice what you see, what you smell, what you hear.
For me, my happy place is a grassy field in New Hampshire, riding my horse Brutus.
The sun is warm and the air is fresh, and I take a deep breath and
feel alert and energized.
But also relaxed.
I've asked a lot of people about their own happy places.
And what I found is that people prefer all sorts of different places.
Some like it loud, others like it quiet.
Some prefer to be inside, while others love to be surrounded by nature.
But what I have found, is that no one's happy place looks like this,
the traditional office.
>> [LAUGH] >> Today, I want to share with you how
we can build happier, healthier, more productive spaces for people.
It's a concept that I've described to many of you as wellness real estate.
The truth is we spend a lot of our time indoors.
In fact, as Americans, we spend over 90% of our lives inside.
That means that the built environment
can have a drastic impact on our health and well-being.
As future business leaders, I want to provide you with the information and
tools you need to build better organizations.
By understanding what healthier spaces look and feel like.
In an increasingly competitive market there's never been a better time
to understand what truly impacts health and productivity.
For the last five years,
I've been working at companies that aim to make buildings healthier.
The opportunity for impact is massive, as health is the fastest growing and
arguably most important market.
And real estate is the world's largest asset class.
Most recently, I've been working with the Well Building Standard,
which is a building certification program that aims to make buildings healthier.
Through design, operations, and also policies.
Today I want to share with you my favorite Well concepts, where I see the greatest
opportunity for impact, air and light.
Let's start with air.
When you think about poor air quality,
you probably imagine people wearing face masks.
Walking around in smoggy environments typically in developing cities.
Or if you were in California last year during the fires, you may picture yourself
walking outside and feeling the soot in the air hit your nose and eyes.
But even if there isn't smog, and even if there aren't fires,
outdoor air quality can be fairly poor.
And what's concerning is that indoor air can actually be 2 to 5
times more contaminated than outdoor air.
And what's concerning about indoor air is that many of
the contaminants we find inside are actually invisible.
In 2014 Harvard did a study that brought this idea of healthy indoor
air quality and work together.
They did this by studying common office workers doing common office tasks.
And looked at how they were responding in terms of crisis response and
decision making.
They showed that by increasing the amount of fresh air in a space and
decreasing the amount of contaminants in that space.
They could improve outcomes by nearly 300%.
How did they do this?
They started by replacing furniture, office supplies, and cleaning products,
with equivalent products that didn't off get as many contaminants into the indoor
environment.
They also thought about how much fresh air was coming through a space.
I'm sure we can all picture ourselves sitting in a stuffy conference room
feeling sleepier and sleepier.
Or how many of you can picture yourself in an airplane,
waiting to take off, feeling sleepier and even a little bit dizzy?
Both of these responses are a result of too many people in a small space,
breathing out carbon dioxide without enough fresh oxygen
coming through that space.
Luckily, there's an easy solution for
this, called demand controlled ventilation.
With demand control ventilation sensor sits
in a potentially densely occupied room.
And as more people come into that space and
breathe out carbon dioxide, the building's mechanical system
automatically pushes more fresh air into that space.
Now that we're all air experts, let's talk a little bit about light.
With a show of hands, how many of you use night shift on your iPhone?.
And for those of you with your hands up, keep them up there.
How many of you know why you use night shift on your iPhone?.
All right, about half the room is an expert already in this space, perfect.
For those of you with your hands up, you know that our eyes are for
more than just seeing.
Our eyes, or more specifically, our optic nerves are responsible for
perceiving the amount and color temperature of light in any given space.
Let's take a step back in time to think about why this is,
back to a time before electricity when we relied on the sun for most of our light.
In the morning as the sun rose, we saw bright white blue tones of light,
telling our bodies to wake up and be alert.
And in the afternoon and evening as the sunset, we saw warmer tones of light or
golden tones.
Telling our bodies to relax and start preparing for sleep.
This 24 hour sleep wake cycle is known as our circadian rhythm, and
it determines many of our bodily functions.
So what happens when we disrupt that cycle?
For example, when we see bright white-blue iPhone light right before we go to sleep?
Well, we're telling our bodies to wake up and
be alert, instead of actually going to sleep.
And we wonder why we have so many sleep disorders.
And what happens when we sit under the same office lighting, all day long.
Well, in the US and in many cities across the world,
typical office lighting is warm in color temperature.
So it's actually telling us to prepare for sleep all day long.
Luckily, there are easy solutions for this as well.
Having access to natural daylight can keep our circadian rhythms in line.
And even when we don't have access to natural daylight,
we can think about the design of our overhead lighting.
Or even add a task light to a workstation that can give us the right amount and
color temperature of light throughout the day.
With this new insight, I want to take you to another one of my happy places.
But first, picture my commute, a bustling New York City Street,
stepping off of a crowded subway platform.
All of this business disappears as I step in and out of the elevator,
into Delos Headquarters, my office.
What always hits me first is the quiet.
Thanks to carefully designed acoustical panels on the ceiling, walls, and floor.
The space is nearly silent.
15 active green walls greet me when I walk in, not only adding greenery to the space,
but they have special nodes on their roots.
That are pulling contaminants out of the indoor air.
My arrival has triggered the lights to turn on bright white-blue
because it's morning.
But I know that over the course of the day,
they'll fade to a golden color temperature, helping me prepare for sleep.
I take a deep breath of fresh air and I feel alert.
I smell a little bit of nature thanks to the wooden staircase that connects our
2 floors.
I know the workday must begin, but it doesn't all seem so bad.
As I grabbed organic banana from the cafe and
sit down in my ergonomically adjustable chair.
My mind is clear.
Now you may be thinking that we can't all work in an office like Delos, but
Delos wasn't just designed with its own employees in mind.
It was designed as a demonstration space, to show people what it looks and
feels like, to be in a space that was designed with people in mind.
And other major players like CBRE and
even Microsoft they are implementing wellness design.
You may also be thinking that all of these seems expensive, but
luckily it isn't more expensive.
It's simply smarter design.
And even where there are small increases in cost
there's a clear return on investment.
The American Society of Interior Designers did a study of their own employees
after moving to a healthier space.
And found increases in productivity of up to 16%.
As future business leaders, we have the power to make our employees healthier.
We can build companies that are not only more profitable, but also better for
our people.
And while it's the right thing to do, it can also make us more competitive.
We can benefit from increases in productivity, and
improved attraction, and retention.
My hope is that someday,
our buildings will actually make us better than when we walk through hat door.
And maybe someday,
our offices will remind us all a little more of our own happy place, thank you.
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