The Well Living Lab, a DelosTM and Mayo Clinic collaboration, recently announced that HOK is the first design, architecture and engineering firm to join the growing Well Living Lab Alliance.
The Well Living Lab studies the connection between health and the indoor environment to transform human health and well-being in places where we live, work, learn, and play. Through the Alliance community, the Well Living Lab collaborates with companies, academic researchers, non-profit organizations and industry experts who want to play a leadership role in understanding and creating indoor environments that enhance human health and wellness.
“HOK is committed to incorporating health and well-being performance and design standards into our projects,” said Mara Baum, AIA, EDAC, WELL, LEED Fellow, HOK’s sustainable design leader for health + wellness. “Joining the Well Living Lab Alliance will help to put HOK at the forefront of industry research, allowing us to better serve our clients by implementing research findings that advance the way we design spaces with health and wellness principles in mind.”
This follows the September 2016 announcement that HOK has partnered with Delos to accelerate the integration of health and wellness into the built environment. HOK recently joined Mortenson, RSP Architects and a team of prominent local consultants to design the first phase of Destination Medical Center’s Discovery Square, an urban life science hub in Rochester, Minnesota. Both the phase one project led by Mortenson, as well as the existing Well Living Lab, will be vital parts of the long-term vision for Discovery Square.
“Our fundamental aspiration is to enhance people’s lives through design,” said Bill Hellmuth, AIA, LEED AP, president and CEO of HOK. “Joining the growing Well Living Lab Alliance, combined with our work on projects like Discovery Square that advance life science research, supports our commitment to using design to improve the health and well-being of communities. We look forward to being involved at the ground level with important research on how the built environment impacts human health. Our access to this research through the Well Living Lab will influence our design approach and processes.”
“Since we spend 90 percent of our time indoors, it makes sense that we look at indoor spaces and ask how we can make it healthier for the people inside,” said Dr. Brent Bauer, Medical Director of the Well Living Lab and Director of the Mayo Clinic Complementary and Integrative Medicine Program. “The Lab was created to evaluate many factors like sound, light, ergonomics and temperature, and to understand how we can make the space healthier. HOK’s expertise in architectural and interior design can help us translate our research into insights that inform building design.”
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