Designing for wellbeing is becoming a new big trend in the real estate industry across the retail, commercial, office and residential sectors. With specific building certifications focused on enhancing wellbeing in the built environment such as the WELL standard, real estate professionals are well equipped to put this at the forefront of their development agendas. Abbi Wolffe, Managing Director of Mason & Fifth, shares with us how they are using wellbeing design practices to design and enhance their coliving communities.

Every start-up has an ambition to effect change in the world; for us at Mason & Fifth this goes beyond offering a healthier, more connected and sustainable way to live well at home for our housemates, it also means finding a healthier, more connected and sustainable way to do well in the world as a business.

Accelerated by COVID-19, we have seen many existing consumer habits and behaviours in flux and many new ones created and cemented. More than ever we are focused on our health, wellbeing and seeking new ways to live well at home and in the world. For the first time in our collective culture, we’ve made the link between connection, community and good mental health.

It’s clear that the socio-economic foundations of our culture have been shifting - from the way we shop to the way we work, how and when we travel, to the way we eat and what we eat, how we meet new people, date, socialise, learn and how we live together. What it means to be and stay well in mind, body and soul, ultimately to experience a life well-lived - personally and planetarily - has come to the fore.

Multiple studies, from the Gallup Wellbeing Index to research about Blue Zones, highlight the powerful intersection between ‘People, Place and Purpose’ alongside health and financial security in a life well- lived. The holistic relationship between having people you care about, connection to where you live (at a home, location and community level), and a sense of meaning day to day (living with intention, making positive choices and achieving goals) is one that we’re leaning into.

Against this backdrop, the concept of wellness and sustainability is changing: we’re still waging a war against plastics and climate change, but today people are looking at the whole system of wellness and sustainability by being conscious about the brands they’re supporting or the purchase they just made.

This means answering questions such as ‘where was this product made and by who?’, ‘what is this brand’s culture?’, ‘do they celebrate diversity?’, ‘are they inclusive in their marketing?’, and ‘are they good people?’. More than ever, the poverty gap is exposing the downfalls of an economy that prioritises profit over people and a new breed of B-Corp businesses are emerging who are part of a new inclusive and sustainable economy that works for everyone, rather than just the 1%. This greater empathy for the world we inhabit feels like a practical spirituality, a movement from capitalism to living more sustainably.

Responding to what are clearly macro environmental, social and economic challenges is daunting at the best of times, unless we remind ourselves that every micro step in the right direction helps. At Mason & Fifth we take a rounded view on how and where we can best make an impact, guided by the belief that a life well-lived starts in the place you live - or as Frank Lloyd Wright put it:

“A building is not just a place to be. It is a way to be.”

Here are a few ways we’re using our buildings to promote a healthier, more connected and sustainable way of being.

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Creating healthy spaces

Our flagship location in Bermondsey, The Italian Building, has been designed in alignment with the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) standards. WELL is grounded in a body of evidence-based research that explores the connection between the buildings (where we spend approximately 90 percent of our time), and the health and wellness impacts on the people inside these buildings.

Where the real estate industry has traditionally been orientated around size, proximity to the centre, speedy and economical construction, in taking a purposeful approach to design, community development and operations, we’re aiming to create environments which are not merely neutral (i.e. don’t have a negative impact on residents) but actively create a sense of wellbeing. As IWBI explains it:

“WELL is premised on a holistic view of health: human health as not only a state of being free of disease - which is indeed a fundamental component of health- but also of the enjoyment of productive lives from which we derive happiness and satisfaction.

Healthy spaces protect us from that which can make us sick, promote practices that can keep us well, and facilitate opportunities for us to connect with one another and live our lives to the fullest.” Implementing the next version of the WELL Building Standard (WELLv2) provides useful guardrails for us to put this into practice in a home environment, covering both how we operate/programme (Nourishment, Mind, Movement, Community) and how we build (Air, Water, Light, Thermal Comfort, Sound, Materials).

The former is reflected in the pillars of ‘well-living’ at Mason & Fifth - ‘modern fitness’, ‘mental clarity’, ‘daily nourishment’ - all of which provide opportunities for the community to ‘connect and play’. We programme a weekly heartbeat of events, classes and meals designed to ground and elevate, keeping everyone’s spirit level. It’s HIIT, yoga and running but paired with direct coaching that explores goals and mindset in tandem with overall fitness levels; informal cooking sessions with a chef nutritionist that bring people together around food as medicine and pleasure, soon to be using home grown veg and herbs; our fortnightly ‘rant and reflect circle’ chats that enable housemates to share the stresses of life, dig a little deeper and become better able to support each other.

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WELLv2 also rewards innovation with extra points, and this has encouraged us to think about how we can nudge our residents to form healthy habits in a gentle way. This often comes in the form of little switches that make a big difference, like taking the stairs instead of the elevator, or trying to cut mobile phone usage at night. The blue lights from phones disrupts our circadian rhythm, reducing melatonin production and inhibiting the REM sleep we need to feel well rested. So we’ve gone analogue with bedside alarm clocks and provide a box to put phones in by studio front doors if it’s a struggle to stop scrolling (creating a new habit sometimes requires a bit of help like this to form a new neural pathway). It’s up to residents what they choose to implement but we continue to look into ‘little big wins’.

The latter has been a process of adapting and refitting, especially as we don’t build from the ground up and started to pursue a WELL accreditation post project completion. We’ve been encouraged to revisit ventilation plans to ensure our system was effective enough (it was!) and monitor air quality, measure daylight lighting levels and install energy efficient LED lightbulbs that also minimise glare and flickering, add a centralised water filter that reduces the need for chemicals in cleaning (in a pre-COVID world). Nevertheless, changes made retrospectively on The Italian Building will be carried through to our pipeline for years to come; in fact we have a team member qualifying in the WELL AP to prioritise this as early as possible across all new developments. We’re now in the process of completing our application and hope to become one of the first WELL accredited coliving buildings.

We couldn’t have done this without WELL specialists Ekkist, and our partners FORE Partnership, who have shared the financial costs and provided ongoing inspiration and guidance. We were drawn together by a clear alignment of values regarding purpose driven real estate - in their words, ‘doing well by doing good’ - and they have backed The Italian Building from the very beginning. The vision of such a forward thinking fund, and Basil Demeroutis and Mariya Tsvetkova’s ongoing support have enabled us to pursue the WELL accreditation in addition to community initiatives like providing homes at no cost to local NHS staff throughout the UK COVID-19 crisis.

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Sustainability meets high and healthy design

There’s a common misconception that investing in better quality materials, sourcing ethically and working with considerate and sustainable suppliers must come at a premium. The real cost is often the time and effort that goes into this exercise. The triple hit is out there - good for the health of the planet and our housemates, good for our budgets and good to look at. These are some more of our little big wins in regards to sustainable design:

• Terrazzo floor: According to Elle Magazine, terrazzo is the original sustainable building material. It’s a perfect choice for The Italian Building, in keeping with the name of the house and our commitment to healthy and sustainable design. It’s crafted from scrap marble and glass that would otherwise go to waste and as a natural product has no pollution-causing volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
• Linen Headboards: Linen adds more than laid-back charm to the room. It’s a natural air-purifier, both hypoallergenic and antimicrobial, suppressing bacteria, fungi and pollen, helping you to breathe freely and preventing allergic disorders and inflammatory conditions.

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• Grasscloth Wardrobes: Our wardrobes are made from hand-woven strands of natural fibres including hemp, jute, sea-grass, arrowroot grass, bamboo and raffia, which are grown and harvested in the same way that they have been for centuries. This material is renewable, biodegradable and breathable, regulating humidity to create the perfect room climate.
• Cork floors: Cork is a wonderfully eco-friendly material made from 100% natural plant tissue harvested from bark every 9 years without any trees being felled. It’s an excellent thermal, acoustic and vibration insulator, keeping our beautiful studios calm and cosy.
• Hypnos Mattresses: GQ called our beds ‘ridiculously comfortable’. They come from the first carbon neutral bedmaker in the world, made of 100% natural fibres that are biodegradable, recyclable at the end of their life and free of harmful and allergy-related chemicals or synthetic, chemical-based memory foams.

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A creative approach to waste

In London, we’re well positioned to leave a greener footprint by recycling our waste. We work with specialists First Mile to meet a ‘zero-to-landfill ambition’, with all non-recyclable waste sent to generate green energy.

We’ve adopted some more creative ways to repurpose waste into something useful, like sending leftover dust sheets from building works to a lovely lady on Etsy to make into durable outdoor rugs for our terrace. We’re learning all the time about the waste that we don’t even think about - like plastic microfibres released by our washing machines that are destined to end up in the ocean. We were alerted to this by the Orca Sound Project and we’re in the process of installing filters into our machines that capture these; what they eventually become is anyone’s guess!

All of this points to a more nuanced, circular view on ‘waste’ compared to purely disposing with rubbish greenly; it’s also about making the most of what is already there, minimising production processes wherever we can. The carpentry around The Italian Building was installed by Goldfinger Factory, a social enterprise who retrain craftsmen in sustainable woodworking and turn waste into gold (or wardrobes, shelving, storage and skirting!) with reclaimed wood; the furnishings mix new with ‘pre-loved’ vintage items, which have the added bonus of having no VOCs; our buildings themselves are all sustainably repurposed existing spaces.

Local Impact Initiatives

We know that our biggest asset is living space - so in 2019 when we were waiting for planning permission at our Marylebone site, we created a series of artist residencies from March to August in partnership with AucArt lest the building site needlessly be empty. Each artist gave us a piece for The Italian Building and we went on to commission additional works from some of the artists.

When Covid-19 delayed our launch we opened our doors to NHS workers at our local hospital Guys and St Thomas. We donated our space at no cost so they could experience a little extra comfort and convenience during a really hard time; we loved getting to know them all and seeing the house put to good use. Happily their knowledge and expertise has shaped where we are today in an unexpected way: as new government guidance was introduced, Anna Black, an NHS resident who was deployed to work on the clinical vaccine trials agreed to become our Lead Healthcare Advisor and worked with us to shape our new Covid-19 health and safety protocol.

In summary

With empathy and collaboration on the rise, communal- living will receive renewed consideration and has an opportunity to define itself by the positive impact it has on the world. Beyond the consumer desire for greater connection and the need for blended live/work/ social environments, there is a new-found openness to alternative ways to live more sustainably, more purposefully and ultimately more innovatively, in a world where meaning, wellbeing and happiness come first.

It remains to be seen what we keep and what we lose in this new normality but it’s clear that there has been an awakening of consciousness in the lives we lead that we’re excited to explore, one step at a time.