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.”
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
Special Recognition: Triple Bridge Gateway, Port Authority Bus Terminal New York, N.Y.
Judges saw the Triple Bridge Gateway in Midtown Manhattan as more art installation than building project, but they were impressed at how the illuminated ramps and bridges—14 years in the making—turned an ugly intersection into something beautiful. The three bridges span 9th Avenue at the juncture where vehicles emerge from the Lincoln Tunnel heading to the Port Authority of New Yor...
| Aug 11, 2010
World's tallest all-wood residential structure opens in London
At nine stories, the Stadthaus apartment complex in East London is the world’s tallest residential structure constructed entirely in timber and one of the tallest all-wood buildings on the planet. The tower’s structural system consists of cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels pieced together to form load-bearing walls and floors. Even the elevator and stair shafts are constructed of prefabricated CLT.
| Aug 11, 2010
Setting the Green Standard For Community Colleges
“Ohlone College Newark Campus Is the Greenest College in the World!” That bold statement was the official tagline of the festivities surrounding the August 2008 grand opening of Ohlone College's LEED Platinum Newark (Calif.) Center for Health Sciences and Technology. The 130,000-sf, $58 million community college facility stacks up against some of the greenest college buildings in th...
| Aug 11, 2010
School Project Offers Lessons in Construction Realities
Imagine this scenario: You're planning a $32.9 million project involving 112,000 sf of new construction and renovation work, and your job site is an active 32-acre junior-K-to-12 school campus bordered by well-heeled neighbors who are extremely concerned about construction noise and traffic. Add to that the fact that within 30 days of groundbreaking, the general contractor gets canned.
| Aug 11, 2010
CityCenter Takes Experience Design To New Heights
It's early June, in Las Vegas, which means it's very hot, and I am coming to the end of a hardhat tour of the $9.2 billion CityCenter development, a tour that began in the air-conditioned comfort of the project's immense sales center just off the famed Las Vegas Strip and ended on a rooftop overlooking the largest privately funded development in the U.
| Aug 11, 2010
University of Arizona College of Medicine
The hope was that a complete restoration and modernization would bring life back to three neoclassic beauties that formerly served as Phoenix Union High School—but time had not treated them kindly. Built in 1911, one year before Arizona became the country's 48th state, the historic high school buildings endured nearly a century of wear and tear and suffered major water damage and years of...
| Aug 11, 2010
Top of the rock—Observation deck at Rockefeller Center
Opened in 1933, the observation deck at Rockefeller Center was designed to evoke the elegant promenades found on the period's luxury transatlantic liners—only with views of the city's skyline instead of the ocean. In 1986 this cultural landmark was closed to the public and sat unused for almost two decades.
| Aug 11, 2010
200 Fillmore
Built in 1963, the 32,000-sf 200 Fillmore building in Denver housed office and retail in a drab, outdated, and energy-splurging shell—a “style” made doubly disastrous by 200 Fillmore's function as the backdrop for a popular public plaza and outdoor café called “The Beach.
| Aug 11, 2010
Integrated Project Delivery builds a brave, new BIM world
Three-dimensional information, such as that provided by building information modeling, allows all members of the Building Team to visualize the many components of a project and how they work together. BIM and other 3D tools convey the idea and intent of the designer to the entire Building Team and lay the groundwork for integrated project delivery.
| Aug 11, 2010
High Tech High International used to be a military facility
High Tech High International, reconstructed inside a 1952 Navy metal foundry training facility, incorporates the very latest in teaching technology with a centerpiece classroom known as the UN Theater, which is modeled after the UN chambers in New York. The interior space, which looks more like a hip advertising studio than a public high school, provides informal, flexible seating areas, abunda...
