"This is the most important thing we can do for ourselves, our families and our kids"
The healthy buildings movement is upon us and, unlike most New Year's wellness endeavours, it's here to stay
So, here we all are. Edging closer to the end of January - the month of moderation, restraint and all things sensible. When gyms have never been busier, bars have never been quieter and eating chocolate coins for breakfast is no longer socially acceptable.
The start of each year marks an almost universally acknowledged season of health and wellbeing. It’s usually a pretty short season for most - the unofficial rules of the game being that if you make it through a whole month then that’s a job very well done and normal service can immediately resume at the stroke of midnight on February 1st - but it rolls around like clockwork every January reminding us to take better care of our minds and bodies.
But here’s the thing; whether we commit to exercising more, doing Dry January or cutting down on screentime, there are few things more impactful in terms of our health and well-being than the buildings in which we spend our lives.
And yet…you can see where this is going, right? And yet, while we are getting better at paying more attention to how places and spaces make us feel emotionally, we barely give a second thought to how the materials used in our homes, workplaces, schools, hospitals - anywhere for that matter – impact our physical health.
Spoiler alert, it’s not good.
Living in a plastic world
To be clear, it’s not all bad either. A Well-Placed post of doom-mongering in isolation would be no way to kick off 2025 so do stick with me. There is a lot to feel reassured about and inspired by when it comes to the growing fight against toxic materials use in buildings. Indeed, in the words of Harvard University’s Healthy Buildings Program director Joseph Allen, buildings represent “one of the greatest public health opportunities of this century.”
This is, in part, down to the sheer magnitude of the problem we are dealing with. “We spend 90% of our time indoors,” says Carrie Denning Jackson, head of innovation and technology at US-based developer Jamestown where she is hoping to demonstrate what can be done to change the very essence of the built world around us. “And yet, 72% of our chemical exposure occurs in our homes.”
Exposure to materials that have, for many years, barely even registered on our radars as health hazards. We are, quite literally, living in a plastic world according to Gina Ciganik, chief executive of Habitable, an organisation focussed on reducing the use of hazardous chemicals in building products.
“We need to start thinking a lot more about what is around us and what we are breathing in,” she says. “Take carpets. Many of them are 65-70% plastic and every year the US throws away about 2.5 million square tonnes of that carpet. That equates to the same amount of plastic in straws, water bottles and bags combined. The largest microplastic in the ocean? Paint. The same latex paint we use on our walls in our homes and offices. These are just a few examples of materials that we are surrounded by that are bad for our health and for the environment. And, with 2.5 trillion sq ft of real estate projected to be built by 2060, the materials we choose going forward really matter.”
A turning tide
Now for some of that reassurance I promised.
The good news is that there is a growing army of experts, academics and scientists calling for change. Not only that, major corporations including Google are working directly with Ciganik and her team at Habitable - which has devised a science-based red to green spectrum of building materials to make it easier for companies to see, in simple terms, the best performers compared to the worst offenders - to make better materials choices. And, crucially, real estate professionals like Denning Jackson are demonstrating how the tide can be turned on live projects.
“Making our buildings, spaces and places healthier is the most important thing we can do for our health and the health of our families and kids,” she says. “At Jamestown we are using materials like cork for flooring instead of more toxic choices. We have also experimented with felt wall coverings on a project and we are doing studies into mineral paints.”
These forays into using alternative materials are crucial adds Denning Jackson, not least because they throw up issues and challenges that need to be ironed out if a new breed of healthier building materials is ever going to be successfully used on a global scale. “We still don’t know the durability of some of these materials,” she says. “The cork we used started bubbling so we had to work out how to fix that and with the felt, we had to educate the installers on how best to work with it as it was new to them. This is all challenging stuff. But experimentation is at the heart of change and innovation.”
It should come as little surprise that one of the biggest hurdles to widespread change relates to cost. Building better might be a no-brainer. But, more often than not, it comes at a premium.
“Certain materials do cost more and get value engineered out,” concedes Denning Jackson. “But the market will change with growing awareness. As the end user starts to demand healthier buildings and materials, that will have an impact on current cost issues.”
In the interim - and indeed beyond - she suggests an industry-wide commitment to buying healthier, more expensive materials in bulk to bring down costs and then deploy across multiple projects. Not just a major step forward for healthy buildings but for a better, more connected real estate sector.
“None of this progress should be kept separate between companies,” she says. “This is a universal issue both for real estate and the wider world because everyone cares about their health and the health of their families.”
And, unlike the New Year’s resolutions we all desperately try to cling on to - at least for 31 days of the year even if for no other reason than to save face - the healthy buildings movement is, thankfully, here to stay.
Click here to watch a full interview with Carrie Denning Jackson and Gina Ciganik speaking about what can be done to promote, design and build healthier buildings during a fireside chat at CREtech New York
The Healthy Building Gurus
Meet some of the key players across global real estate and design championing a world where healthier buildings and better places and spaces reign…
Olga Turner Baker, co-founder and Managing Director of Ekkist
Founder of the UK’s first health and well-being consultancy for the built environment, Turner Baker specialises in consulting on the WELL Building Standard and on the design, creation and management of buildings and places that support human health and well-being. In 2019, she was listed in the Forbes 30 under 30 in the ‘Manufacturing and Industry’ category for her work in health and wellbeing in the built environment.
Magali Thomson, Project Lead for Place Making, Great Ormond Street Hospital
Leading a transformational approach to public realm, Thomson is setting out a vision to radically overhaul a polluted and traffic dominated urban street next to the UK’s best-known children’s hospital. With a specialism in preventative approaches to health and the impact our environment has on our health outcomes, Thomson is spearheading plans and proposals to create a climate resilient, healthy and child-friendly environment in the heart of London.
Juliette Morgan, ESG Consultancy Director, Gensler
A long-term advocate of healthy buildings and the power of nature for well-being, Morgan’s work at global design practice Gensler neatly dovetails with the firm’s materials index. The Gensler Product Sustainability Standards (GPS) establish sustainability performance criteria for the top 12 most commonly used, high-impact products categories including board insulation, resilient flooring and carpet tile.
Carrie Denning Jackson, Director of Tech and Innovation at Jamestown
A former director on the development team at Google’s urban innovation arm Sidewalk Labs, Denning Jackson has become a vocal advocate for healthy buildings, places and spaces since joining New York-based, design focussed real estate investment company Jamestown where she champions the use of alternative materials including cork and felt. She launched the Instagram profile placeasmedicine in December 2024.
Gina Ciganik, CEO, Habitable
A former real estate developer with two decades’ experience creating healthy, affordable homes, Ciganik is now recognised as a global leader in advancing human and environmental health. She has been CEO of Habitable, which ‘activates science to reimagine the materials economy so we can rebalance the health of humans and are planet’ since 2016.
Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and technology journalist contributing to titles including Wallpaper*, WIRED, GQ, The Spaces. She is also Head of Content at CREtech.
