Sustainability certifications like LEED, WELL and Fitwel represent an achievement of standards of excellence and green building leadership. But once designs achieve these benchmarks, can they aspire to having long-lasting, behavioral effects on users?
Laying a foundation for change
Inspiring action begins with a focus on the health and well-being of users, environmental impacts, and reduced carbon emissions—an approach that informs our practice’s NET POSITIVE™ sustainable strategy framework and guides our decisions to generate positive impacts.
“Realizing something that’s sustainable requires says our Director of Sustainability Hugo Lafrance. “I’m often asked if there’s one idea or solution to implement, but there is no universality to it. There are always multiple avenues that need to be explored. With NET POSITIVE, its three pillars lead to 12 objectives, and each of those objectives involve their own criteria.”
Each of NET POSITIVE’s pillars can lead to experiential designs that inspire action in users: Active layouts like the one found in the GardaWorld Head Office can support health lifestyles by creating opportunities for movement. Places like the UAP Montreal head office expose users to the possibilities of renewable energy technologies and strategies, and show how they could be implemented in actionable ways. Regenerative landscape and appropriable outdoor space can not only help the environment with biodiversity, but include the benefit of being exposed to nature, as seen at the Bedford Heritage Park and LaSalle Secondary School.
Augmenting design with communication
Once the foundation of an influential design is laid, it can be built upon further with culture of communication geared towards positive change.
“The shape and form of architecture and interiors, and their ability to influence positive behaviours in users, is the basis of what we do as designers,” says Julia Easto, our Practice Leader in Interior Design. “It’s taking detailed notions of how people live, work, and exist, and creating spaces that encourage positive actions.”
But to change behaviours in people, she says, both conscious and unconscious pathways must be given to affect them. In Julia’s mind, designs can remove hurdles to positive actions and inspire lasting sustainable behaviours, but they also require active involvement in how spaces and places are used.
“It takes bold visionaries to pursue behavioural changes,” Julia says. “You need to want them. The people who break through and change what tomorrow will look like need not only the architecture and interiors to make it happen, but also the policies that facilitate and support this change.”
“Build the base and create the culture,” she adds. In other words: Design is a guiding force, but the space it creates must be imbued with the right culture to have a continued impact.
Communication can go a long way to enhance sustainable strategies and directly influence users; as design intent is passed along to a space or place’s operations team, it can in turn be shared with the user.
Projects like Humaniti and its WELL certification demonstrate this: “We created a guide that was made available on the building’s app that was communicated to users to inform them of how and why the building was designed the way it was,” Hugo explains.
also points to our own Montreal office, the Phenix, and its dashboard that allows users to see how their actions impact the building’s inner workings and efficiency. With it, they can better visualize how their actions—whether it’s opening a window or turning up the heat—makes a tangible impact.
With these kinds of communicative features further augmenting the sustainable strategies of NET POSITIVE, users can understand not only how and why a design benefits the environment, but also how their active use of that design can extend into positive actions in and outside of it.
Learn more about NET POSITIVE™ and its history in transforming markets and creating sustainable value in all aspects of our practice with the latest report.
