Wellbeing via Architecture?
Patrik Schumacher, London 2024
Published in: Five Critical Essays on Wellbeing, TRG Publishing, London 2024
Is Wellbeing just the latest vacuous fad in architecture? Is it, as Reinier de Graaf argues in his recent book “architect, verb” on “the new language of building”, part and parcel of the recently proliferating arsenal of hypocritical, self-alienating but obligatory phrases he calls “profspeak”? De Graaf coined the term “profspeak” in allusion to Orwell’s notion of “newspeak”, implying vague, euphemistic phrases that sound benign and competent, and that gloss over anything potentially controversial or difficult. Talking about Wellbeing fits this bill and does indeed allow architects to communicate safely with its audience, in ways that allow them to avoid addressing their actual searching ideas and half-articulate ambitions. Wellbeing in architecture thus joins the arsenal of conveniently indisputable do-good agendas like sustainability, community engagement, inclusion, liveability and human-centric placemaking that swamp, level and trivialise architectural discourse, also between architects, by crowding out all difficult and controversial questions. Yes, Reinier is right, not only with his overall thesis, but also in including Wellbeing in his scathing critique of Profspeak. The discourse on wellbeing in architecture, at least in its current form, is binding precious attention unproductively. However, my contribution does not close here. In contrast to my friend Reinier, devastating or negative critique is never where I want to end. Critique must be constructive.
Zaha Hadid often remarked that architecture is really all about wellbeing. I always concurred.
Is wellbeing then an important goal or criterion for architectural design after all? Yes, but not in the sense it has been bandied about in architecture, and certainly not in the sense measured by the “wellness score” of the WELL certification scheme promoted by the US Green Building Council. The physical or physiological aspects of the wellness score like air quality in terms of fresh air supply and the avoidance of pollutants are important but trivial, and they are the esponsibility of the engineers rather than the architects. To be sure, its great that the recent concern with wellbeing sets basic priorities right and that the days when the overriding goal of “sustainability” led mechanical engineers to proudly reduce fresh air supply to the minimal legally required air exchange rate. Our first concern with CO2 overdoses should certainly be with respect to our immediate indoor living spaces, especially workspaces.
Matters are non-trivial, more intricate, elusive and far less amenable to score systems like WELL when it comes to “psychological wellbeing”, i.e. when it comes to what Zaha Hadid had in mind: being stimulated, spirited and happy. The formulaic WELL recommendations for office buildings like windows offering pleasant views no more than 6 meters away, indoor plants and water-features, the limitation of occupancy density, the avoidance of rooms with more than 6 workers etc. remain, by necessity, in the realm of the trivial, and are (in contrast to the recommendations for physiological wellbeing) inherently misguided. They are not only ineffective but counterproductive.
The concept of wellbeing as architecture’s endgame can and must be redeemed and wrestled from the deadening grip of the WELL fad. My thesis proposed here, as premise for this redemption, is that the wellbeing of end-users in a space or building naturally depends on fulfilling the uses and purposes that attract those end-users in the first place. The psychological criteria of end-user wellbeing cannot abstract from these purposes and must be closely linked to the specific social functionality requirements and criteria of success. In this sense, the first condition of end-user wellbeing is that these users succeed in pursuing their purposes, and do so well, with ease, and without undue friction or stress. When it comes to contemporary office spaces, especially the work environments of the knowledge economy, this implies that maximizing wellbeing and happiness of end-users must be expected to coincide with the workers’ productivity. Especially in the knowledge economy work satisfaction coincides with productivity. Being productive is a primary factor in any worker’s psychological state, positively or negatively: feeling well if productive, feeling miserable if unproductive. That is why the workers psychological wellbeing should primarily be addressed by focussing on the conditions of maintaining or enhancing productivity levels for everybody in the space or building. This thesis is a premise for developing strategies, methodologies and design tools that can be expected to enhance the wellbeing of end-users pursuing their purposes in the buildings and spaces in question.
Since the productivity of knowledge workers depends on being embedded in both informational and collaborative social networks, everybody’s productivity gain is enhancing and enhanced by everybody else’s. While there are many factors that come into play, architectural design can certainly make a difference here. The above thesis thus translates into the claim that the psychological wellbeing of end-users is best served by the enhancement of the design’s social functionality. In general, the social function of architecture can be defined as the spatial ordering of social interactions. With respect to contemporary work environments the purpose of making the investment and effort to bring knowledge workers together is to engender information exchange and collaboration as critical factors of productivity. This implies the architectural task of maximizing communication opportunities. This in turn implies maximizing inter-visibility and inter-awareness within and across teams and activities. These factors led to concepts like the large, continuous open office landscape and the idea of visual connections across levels. These concerns and factors stand in stark opposition with the concerns, criteria and recommendations of WELL. Views out of windows as well as plants and water features are at best irrelevant distractions, but might often be counterproductive and get in the way of the real criteria. Instead of the recommended limitation of occupancy density, the name of the game should be about maximizing interaction density. The immediate desire a worker or leader might have to pull away into seclusion, into a corner office with nice views, cannot be taken seriously as a sure guide to real, long-term psychological well-being (which according to the thesis put forward here can only flow from work satisfaction that depends on productivity. In contemporary post-fordist network society everybody’s knowledge and tasks must be continuously re-calibrated with respect to everybody else’s tasks and experiences. Hiding in corner offices might be pleasant in the moment but becomes detrimental very quickly with respect to productivity, self-development, career progression etc. A truly satisfying and uplifting day in the office is probably more likely to be the result of meeting some new interesting people, and engaging in resourceful, inspiring conversations, offering new vital information, learning about new task opportunities, work methodologies etc. It is by maximising opportunities for such encounters and conversations that buildings and spaces maximize sustainable wellbeing.
These insights motivated me to initiate a design research programme encompassing the development of agent-based occupancy and interaction simulation tools – with differentiated/variegated agent populations – focussing on encounter densities, encounter variety, and the spatial conditions of converting encounters into conversations. This leads to complex, high-density, high-variety, high-connectivity spaces. Currently this operationalisation of social functionality criteria is further expanded to tools simulating and optimizing for feature recognition and navigation in complex spaces. These methodologies and customisable tools home in on the configurational facilitation and perceptual tractability of communicative interaction opportunities in social spaces, in each case tailored to the specific social purposes with their attendant success criteria. Rather than being addressed independent from the purposes and social success criteria of projects, as WELL presumes, individual end-user wellbeing must be considered in close connection with these social purposes. The concept of individual productivity and productive experiences is the best proxy and guide in this respect. This concept can also be analogically generalized from work environments to educational environments, and cultural venues, albeit, in each case operationalized via tailored methods and specifically calibrated tools.
End.