Healthy Building design

Healthy by design:

By incorporating healthy design principles in the design from the outset a building or landscape can provide an uplifting and life enhancing environment. Simple healthy design strategies that Gale & Snowden include into their work include:

• Maximise natural daylight design
• Provide thermal comfort by ensuring an efficient thermal building envelope that has no unwanted drafts
• Provide good quality ventilation
• Enabling the building fabric to 'breathe'' ie: vapour permeable construction
• Reduce EMFs (Electro Magnetic Fields) in and around buildings by designing radial wiring in buildings that shut down electrical charges when not in use and the positioning of buildings away from EMF sources. By avoiding EMFs in our buildings, our bodies and nervous system, which rely on electrical impulses to work, are less interrupted, and therefore more healthy and able to sleep more soundly.

Healthy by materials selection:

The choice of materials is key in creating a healthy building or landscape. The Practice's guiding principles in materials selection include:

• Specification of easily cleanable floor surfaces throughout (eg: tiles, marmoleum, timber) and reduce interior fabrics to avoid dust mites habitats
• Organic and mineral paints, stains and waxes throughout
• Specification of non-VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) materials
• Specification of non-toxic cleaning materials
• Avoid using PVC by careful product selection
• Minimising the building’s environmental impact through the adoption of sustainable materials featuring low embodied energy, derived from the most locally available sustainable sources.
   

The feedback the Practice has received from occupants of our buildings over the years has proved that by adopting simple healthy design measures, a healthy environment can be achieved.