ethics behind Designing for good health & wellbeing

The third UN Sustainable Goal relates to good health and wellbeing.

Ensuring healthy lives and promoting the wellbeing for all ages is essential to promoting sustainable development.

There are two predominant ethical factors when considering a design for good health and wellbeing: environmental health and human health. The question designers, and specifically architects need to be asking is how do we design for a healthy world? What does this mean? Why is it important?

People spend 80% of their time in built spaces and moving forward we need to consider how garden cities and social housing is going to impact people’s engagement in the built environment. The ethics of designing healthy cities include:

• Specific design aspects

• Use of materials – are they reused or recycled

• Distribution of space – public VS private spaces within

Designing for good health and wellbeing also comprises of mental, physical and social health – especially in relation to good human health. The philosophical/theoretical framework surrounding this integration includes the re-wilding of flora and fauna reintroduced into urban contexts. While the use of organic materials like straw, bamboo, timber or hemp is certainly welcomed in the design for good health and wellbeing, buildings should be formed of hyper-wild living bio-organisms.

By using living bio-organisms in design, we can achieve a variety of different purposes dedicated to sustainable design including:

• Regulation of temperature

• Absorption of greenhouse gases

• Filtration of air pollutants

• Generation of energy

Wellbeing in architecture should focus on the combination of psychological and social wellbeing of its occupants. Psychological wellbeing refers to the optimal functioning of the individual while social wellbeing refers to the optimal functioning of the community. World GBC has comprised a Health and Wellbeing Framework for designers.