Most homes are not built with human health in mind. In fact, many are actually contributing to negative health outcomes and overall poor health in occupants young and old. But what does a “healthy” home look like? What features should be incorporated and what should be avoided?
This is what the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) set out to solve nearly four years ago. But the history of IWBI and its effort to create a standard of wellness in the built environment dates back to more than a decade ago.
Building toward a new standard
In 2014, IWBI introduced the WELL Building Standard, the world’s first building standard to focus on enhancing people’s health and well-being through the built environment. At the time, most building standards like LEED, BREEAM and Living Building Challenge focused primarily on sustainability and the built environment's impact on the planet. WELL, however, focused exclusively on the humans who occupied those buildings.
While it was on the roadmap to eventually include residential buildings, the WELL Building Standard was initially optimized for commercial and institutional buildings. After 2020, however, when much of the world shifted to being more home centric, it catalyzed IWBI to prioritize the development of the residential standard.
The first step was to organize a WELL for Residential Advisory––a group of experts who would help guide the expansion of the evidence-based WELL Building Standard to the design and construction of single-family homes worldwide.
“A healthy home is the foundation for people to live their best and healthiest lives,” said Liz Miles the vice president of residential at IWBI. “Unfortunately, most homes across the world are not built with health in mind, and we really observed a dawning of awareness since the outbreak of the pandemic on the connection between home and health.”
Following nearly two years of gathering industry input, market insight and expert recommendations from its WELL for Residential Advisory, IWBI launched a global pilot program with 25 diverse participants who enrolled nearly 30,000 residences into the program. To date, three projects have earned the WELL for Residential seal and several others are nearing completion.
These pilots will undoubtedly inform future versions of the standard, but for this initial version, two primary guiding principles emerged: prioritize human health and well-being and make it accessible to everyone.
“We set out to fundamentally shift the standard of design for all residences from single-family homes to units in multifamily buildings,” Miles said. “Our goal really with this program is to create a flexible roadmap for healthier homes that can be utilized by all building professionals, from architects to designers, engineers, developers, home builders, operators, and even homeowners.”
Creating a standard that could be utilized by everyone from seasoned designers to homeowners and translate across a variety of residential building types first meant rethinking how projects would be evaluated.
Standardizing but with flexibility
Perhaps the most notable change in the WELL for Residential program is the elimination of preconditions––the set of mandatory requirements that are considered to be fundamental to a WELL Certified space. Instead, all features have the potential to be point earning. This was an intentional move designed to accommodate the vast differences in residential building codes that exist around the globe and provide flexibility depending on project goals and building type––existing vs. new build and single-family vs. multi-family.
“There are so many different codes and laws pertaining to residential across the globe, so it's really difficult to say what collection of features has to be met by everyone,” Miles said. “But what is required is a minimum of 40 points. We are adding additional point-earning opportunities for existing buildings, but the goal is to hit that 40-point minimum depending on where you're located, what your goals are and what your starting point is.”
Those familiar with the WELL Building Standard will recognize the 10 core concepts that carry over to the residential program:
- Air
- Water
- Nourishment
- Light
- Movement
- Thermal Comfort
- Sound
- Materials
- Mind
- Community
Each of the concepts contains a set of features, which in the WELL Building Standard are either preconditions (requirements) or optimizations (not required, but point earning). In the WELL for Residential, all features are considered optimizations with the potential for point earning. There are more than 60 features nestled within the concepts. Features are further broken down into parts, of which there are more than 100. There are also helpful strategies embedded within each of the concepts to help achieve points in each category.
For instance, within the Air concept, one of the features is ventilation design and includes the following parts:
- Installing mechanical exhausts––with strategies for the bath, kitchen and laundry area
- Providing outdoor air––through mechanical ventilation
- Validating the ventilation––with specific rates to be met
- Installing cooking exhaust systems
- Providing demand-controlled ventilation––designed to regulate the outdoor air supply and control carbon dioxide (CO2) levels
It’s not a requirement to meet all parts within a feature. They’re meant to provide options and strategies for optimizing the health of a space.
It’s also worth noting the eleventh concept “Innovation”. This concept is in both standards and is strictly point earning without any preconditions. Because our understanding of health and well-being as relates to the built environment is continually evolving, this concept leaves room for novel, evidence-based solutions to be introduced.
With the incentive for innovation and flexibility baked into the residential standard, several projects have already demonstrated the range of what can be done at various scales.
Exploring WELL Standards in action
One notable project that’s made headlines across the architecture and design community is CM1 by Caplow Manzano in Miami, Florida. This was the first single-family residential project to receive the WELL Certification and it demonstrated what can be achieved when you question every element of the traditional building process.
CM1 was designed for health and wellness, but also for climate resiliency––a key priority in South Florida where flooding is common. At a glance, some of the health and wellness strategies included:
- Eliminating all drywall, instead opting for water- and mold-resistant materials like concrete and lime plaster
- Creating accessible plumbing cavities to easily detect and repair leaks
- Eliminating all ductwork by using a series of mini splits throughout the home
- Opting for non-toxic finishes and materials (all low- or no-VOC)
- Eliminating the use of insulation inside the living space
Every room is also independently climate controlled and prioritizes the use of natural light. From a regenerative and resiliency standpoint, the team elevated the entire home 10 feet above grade to handle floods, designed irrigation-free landscaping, used lime plaster for walls, and implemented strategies to achieve the LEED platinum energy conservation standards.
CM1 was Caplow Manzano’s concept of “hypoconstruction” put to the test in the real world, and it undoubtedly set the tone for future WELL for Residential projects.
“There were so many great features they implemented in that project, but our reviewer most enjoyed the accessible plumbing panels,” Miles said. “That was, I would say, the most innovative that we saw on that project specifically.”
At the other end of the pilot program spectrum is Corvias, a public-private partner to state and local governments, the military and higher education. The housing operator implemented their own pilot of sorts, first developing a set of wellness design interventions to be applied to military housing units then testing these interventions on a sampling of 50 homes in two of its housing units before rolling it out to others.
“Corvias, which is the privatized military operator on behalf of the US Department of Defense, has implemented WELL for Residential in their design guidelines, which they're rolling out across 22,000 homes in a tiered approach,” Miles said. “They're taking a phased approach for each military base based on a seven-step wellness program. Eventually, all 22,000 homes will have the same health and well-being interventions.”
Thus far, the interventions have been introduced in Corvias’s Fort Meade, Maryland and Fort Liberty, North Carolina housing units. This initial sample of 50 homes is important because it demonstrates that wellness standards can be achieved at scale without expensive renovations, complete overhauls or new construction.
Another example of WELL at scale is in a master-planned community outside of Houston in Texas. By Johnson Development, the community officially known as Jubilee is being dubbed “The Joyful Neighborhood”. The 1,620-acre community, which will eventually have approximately 4,800 homes, includes eight builders in this initial phase who have all committed to construction processes and healthier home features designed to meet WELL for Residential standards. At a high level, this includes standardizing reverse-osmosis filtration systems, equipping each home with fresh-air intake and MERV 13 filters, and offering options for circadian rhythm lighting.
“Johnson Development already had a contract with these builders on what they were expecting in their homes at a base level, so they were able to incorporate WELL for Residential in those contracts with the builders,” Miles said. “Each of those builders are expected to deliver a WELL residence across the 10- to 12-year timeline. It's another great example of aligning well with an existing design standard or guidance.”
To learn more about the WELL for Residential Standards access the framework here. This nearly 250-page guide includes information about the 10 concepts and outlines some strategies for achieving those.
