Workplace Design For Health: Part 2

Toward an Ergonomic and Organic Office Environment

AUTHOR: PAUL WHELAN

Monocultures have become the dominant spatial paradigm of our society. This thinking is normally associated with high-efficiency industrialized farming in which vast areas are planted with the same crop to rationalize planting, disease control, and harvesting. In the name of efficiency, crops or activities are carefully zoned in like-areas so that vast regions have the same single crop or usage. This approach to our environment is clearly evident in our office environments.

Currently, much office design is focused on maximizing the number of workers in a given area. This design strategy efficiently rationalizes space from a real estate point of view, but does not necessarily drive health, employee satisfaction, or even productivity. Humans, like any biological life form, thrive in a richer ecosystem that supports a wide range of options.

So how do we understand what makes a healthier and more diverse environment? Clearly, we live in a world where results have to be measured and documented. In a biological model, the biomass can be weighed and the variety of species counted. How do we measure the diversity and effectiveness of the workplace environment? How can we know that we are optimizing our work situation? Fortunately, there is a growing body of research aimed at better understanding the office workplace.

Creating a rich work environment starts with accommodating an individual’s health in terms of injury, ergonomics and stress. Compared to other work environments, the modern office is relatively safe, but there is still a risk of physical injury. Carpal tunnel syndrome is the poster child of the modern workplace injury. It is caused by damage to the median nerve in the wrist. The median nerve, blood vessels and tendons run through a narrow sleeve formed by the carpal bones and ligament.

If the wrist is held in a flexed position for long periods of time, the nerve is pinched and eventually suffers long-term damage. Since the advent of the computer age, the numbers of these work-related injuries have risen steadily. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome takes years to develop and alas takes years to heal.

Alarmingly, the next generation of workers may already be entering the workforce with computer-related health issues. Alan Hedge, Professor of Ergonomics at Cornell University, believes that it takes about 10 years for repetitive strain injuries to become established. If this is true, then today’s children will enter the workforce primed for injury. In fact, young people are more vulnerable, as they often use equipment sized for adults.

Aside from keyboards and mouse pads, the office chair is most often considered in regard to ergonomics. There are many excellent ergonomic chairs on the market and, sadly, many that are not. The newest generation of ergonomic chairs adjusts to our body positions automatically and actually has fewer manual levers and knobs. No more fiddling under the chair or hiring a consultant to show people how to use all those knobs. However, regardless of the product, seating, keyboard trays, or mouse pads, frequent body shifting is crucial for our health. All our joints need blood flow and nourishment. Static positions cut off blood flow and ultimately stress our muscles and joints. The best ergonomic decision we make is to get up and move around.

Good lighting is another critical element in a healthy workplace. The human eye requires four times as much contrast for reading as it does for a computer monitor. Furthermore, as we age, we require even more light for reading. The simple provision of adaptable task lighting can have a huge impact on worker health and efficiency.

However, good lighting, both artificial and natural, is just the tip of a new cultural iceberg—the environmental movement. This movement will have profound effects on worker health. The design and construction of buildings and workspaces are increasingly becoming more sustainable. Buildings consume a significant percentage of our resources and contribute to environmental degradation.

The effect on human health of a structure’s poor design is critical, given the telling statistic that 30% percent of US buildings have Sick Building Syndrome. I suspect the Canadian statistic would be similar.

Sustainable design focuses on improving the quality of the indoor environment by limiting indoor pollutants.

Many new buildings and interior environments are being constructed to LEED® standards. This is a rigorous process that measures environmental efficiency based on categories ranging from limiting sprawl to reducing consumption of water, energy, and materials. Sustainable design also focuses on improving the quality of the indoor environment of buildings and the health of the workplace. Vivian Loftness at Carnegie Mellon has been compiling statistics on the relationship between the quality of the indoor environment and worker performance and health. Seemingly unrelated phenomena such, as the provision of natural daylight, have been shown to reduce health concerns such as eye strain and back pain.

This link between human health and the environment has become a focus for researchers. For example, R.S. Ulrich took advantage of an inadvertent architectural experiment on the surgical floors of a Pennsylvania hospital where post-operative patients were randomly assigned rooms that either faced a stand of deciduous trees or a brick wall. Over a 10-year review of patient records, those with tree views had 9% shorter hospital stays and less need for pain medication. Subsequent studies by Ulrich and others linked natural light and views to reduced infection rates and improved satisfaction and productivity.

This body of research informed the design thinking for a University Health Network renovation that HOK completed in Toronto on University Avenue. In addition to a range of operational upgrades, we designed a four-storey glass Patient Court. This open, airy space provides natural light, greenery and southern views overlooking the city.

At Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo, Michigan, renovations included private rooms, an atrium garden, local artwork on the walls, and corridors with natural light. These measures have been directly linked to reducing infection rates by 10%, improving patient satisfaction to 95.4%, and decreasing nursing turnover to below 12%.

Long before much of the preceding research, sociobiologist E. O. Wilson published Biophilia in 1984. In this book, he posits an intriguing answer to the question of why natural views should have such a positive effect on the human mind and body. He hypothesizes that the evolution of the human brain in a natural setting has hardwired humans to pay attention to nature for survival and procreation. The validity of this thinking has been tested in a variety of settings.

Subjects in one study rated images of different types of landscapes and consistently chose savannah-like environments over other types, even if they had never actually been in a tropical savannah. Gordon Orians and Judith Heerwagen have shown that people even have a preference for tree shapes like those found in “high-quality” savannahs. The ‘savannah hypothesis’ is that humans evolved in the African savannah, and we are preconditioned to prefer this kind of environment.

Environmental psychologists Judith Heerwagen and James Wise believe that nature’s “rhyming” diversity—the random repetition of patterns and forms at different levels of scale—can have a positive effect on performance and well-being. Beginning in 1997, these two researchers consulted with Herman Miller to design and conduct a series of experiments to further investigate this theory. They discovered that workstations with a digital image designed to convey qualities of a savannah landscape were associated with higher scores in creative problem-solving tasks.

While this research focuses on the natural environment, I wonder about the research’s cultural parameters. For example, does the savannah resemble the American suburban landscape? Do people simply respond to the landscape with which they are familiar? One body of research focuses on topophilia—a love of place that may be landscape, natural or urban. Humans imbue spaces with cultural meaning and, over time, we identify strongly with these places.

We are… cultural animals and are conditioned by the spaces we build.

Humans are a part of the natural world, and we respond to that world. However, it is clear from the examples from my previous article that we are also cultural animals and are conditioned by the spaces we build. With so much research into humanity, the old paradigm of nature vs. nurture seems to inform our response to spaces. Our positive and negative reactions to spaces reflect both environmental and cultural inputs.

In the final article of this series, I will describe how successful design integrates these various tendencies to create meaningful spaces.

ALL PHOTOS BY HOK EXCEPT OFFICE INTERIOR BY RICHARD JOHNSON

Paul Whelan is a Toronto-based architect with an extensive background in the design of office interiors and community-focused spaces. Paul is particularly interested in the relationship between human social institutions and our designed environment.