Thriving: Health and the Built Environment

The Workshop: Thriving: Health and the Built Environment will take place on January 23rd, 2018 in New York City, New York, U.S. It seems that everyone is talking about health and wellness in the built environment. Every major conference features sessions on healthy building, indoor air quality, and/or increasing productivity through a healthy workplace. Given that we spend on average 90% of our days inside and that for most businesses 90% of costs are attributed to people, creating healthy, productive spaces are critical.

But what does this mean? How do you create healthy building? What is a truly healthy environment?

In this groundbreaking workshop, you will go beyond the typical conversations on health in the built environment to explore deeply how to create healthy environments for people, communities, and ecosystems. Healthy built environments are complex and multi-faceted. To be truly healthy, we must address our mental, emotional, and psychological health through fostering community and a direct connection to nature. As interconnected, social, cooperative beings that are part of, not separate from nature this means addressing not just the person, but the community and the ecosystem as well.

Through short, engaging presentations, and an exploration of leading case studies participants will develop a robust understanding of the how the built environment affects health at multiple levels and how strategies related to things like healthy materials, community building, and biophilic design can be used comprehensively and in concert to create enriching environments in which our whole selves, our communities, and the natural world thrive.