WELLNESS
Designing offices with “WELLNESS” as the next-generation keyword

It has been calculated that if office utility costs are set as “1”, rent is “10”, and worker salaries are “100.” That means that an office designed with worker health in mind has a high added value. It has also become clear that the design of interior environments has a major impact on intellectual productivity. Against that background, the WELL Building Standard was developed to assess “offices which are comfortable and good for the health of the people who inhabit the building”. The seven assessment items are air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort, and mind. Compared to previous building assessment indices, WELL places more emphasis on management principles and workers’ diverse behaviors.
In Wellness design, it is important to have a deep understanding of human physiology, as well as of changing of workstyles. People in the latest offices use cafes as work spaces, and there are napping rooms where people can refresh themselves by taking a nap. The optimum interior environment must be offered in each of these diverse spaces, based on human physiology. To that end, environmental control of aspects such as humidity, radiation, color, and odor, becomes necessary, in addition to the kind of design that has previously emphasized air temperature and brightness. For example, in hospital rooms which use radiant cooling, measurement has confirmed that needless body movement during sleep, due to air conditioner drafts, has almost completely ceased.

From the perspective of wellness, it is important for thermal loads on the human body to be small. Radiant cooling controls the surface temperatures of the walls, ceilings, and floors that surround the human body. That method can form a superior thermal environment, which imposes little thermal burden on the body. Research cases have been presented in which body exergy is smallest (i.e. the load on the body is small) in a thermal environment where MRT (Mean Radiant Temperature) is 2°C lower than air temperature.
It may somehow make occupants feel hot and stressed when the thermal environment is too still. In some cases, radiant cooling has been adopted that controls a slight and subtle air flow, to provide a feeling of coolness and to lower stress.

The TABS (Thermal Active Building System) has been proposed as a system for cooling concrete structural frames at night and then using their radiant cooling to handle interior loads during the day. TABS uses the heat capacity of the structural frame, so it can be used as a demand response tool, making it possible to cut the capacity of heat sources. The large surface area of the concrete structural frame can be used as radiant surfaces, which makes it possible to build low-cost radiant cooling systems.