COOKFOX’s innovative WELL Gold headquarters

COOKFOX Architects were one of the early adopters of the WELL Building Standard™ (WELL™). Recognized leaders in sustainable development and designing spaces to advance human health and wellness, COOKFOX gravitated toward WELL as a tool to help implement their vision to “pursue architecture that restores, regenerates and elevates the urban environment.”

Throughout the WELL process, COOKFOX honored its visual style and culture with more temperate lighting, natural materials for furniture and finishes, as well as an emphasis on outdoor space and a connection to nature.

COOKFOX achieved WELL Certification at the Gold level and LEED Platinum Certification for their studio in the 1921 Fisk Tire Building in Manhattan’s Midtown in April 2017.

At a glance:

Preconditions achieved

Optimizations achieved

Certification level

Background:

Why did COOKFOX pursue WELL? What were your objectives?
As architects, we spend a majority of our time in our studio, so the space we create for ourselves has a huge effect on our health. We strive to devise healthy spaces and implement the healthiest practices in our work, and pursuing WELL Certification gave us a framework to lend a measure of rigor to our efforts. The studio is ultimately an expression of our mission to connect people to nature within the built environment.

How does WELL align with the mission or values of your organization?
As a firm, we always make efficient, high-performance and biophilic design a priority in all of our projects. We believe in creating the healthiest spaces possible to support mental and physical well-being and WELL allowed us to institutionalize this method in a precise manner.

How did your team approach the WELL Certification process and work together to achieve your WELL goals?
We decided to do in-house certification to thoroughly learn how WELL worked and have first-hand experience with the process. We undertook the project with the first version of WELL and were able to collaborate with IWBI to interpret many points of the standard. Upon completion of the project, we took away a great deal of knowledge regarding WELL, how to work towards certification and how to institutionalize our biophilic, sustainable and health design goals.

Highlights:

NOURISHMENT

Feature 51: Food Production

Intent: To improve access to fresh produce by providing space, infrastructure and tools for on-site food production.

COOKFOX garden

Urban gardening plots, hydroponic towers and two apiaries allow studio members to cultivate edible plants and raw honey for an immediate and intimate connection with food production. Studio members volunteer to tend to the continuously evolving garden, which bears a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. Our green spaces honor nearly a decade of care and stewardship of rooftop gardens by our staff.

LIGHT

Feature 61: Right to Light

Intent:To promote exposure to daylight and views of varying distances by limiting the distance workstations can be from a window or atrium.

To take advantage of the abundant daylight the studio receives, almost all desks are located within 20 feet of the windows on the northern section of the floor. Our lighting system prioritizes this daylight and minimizes the blue light spectrum to support healthy circadian rhythms. The studio is lit by reflected light in order to approximate more natural, dynamic lighting conditions.

MIND

Feature 88: Biophilia I - qualitative

Intent: To nurture the innate human-nature connection within the project.

The spatial layout of the studio is oriented so that circulation of the space is anchored by framed views of gardens at each end of the studio. This connection extends into the studio space in the use of natural materials and textures. Upon entering the studio, visitors encounter white oak doors, carpet with biomimetic patterns and tactile details such as bamboo work surfaces and textured glass that mimics flowing water. These features are pleasing to the eye but also evoke the positive biological responses that improve wellness.

What are the most innovative or stand-out aspects of your WELL project?
In an ongoing urban gardening experiment, we have a garden bed, hydroponic towers and two beehives on one of our three terraces. The bed equates to one square foot of garden per occupant, and we provide gardening tools, planting medium and other supplies to grow and maintain vegetables and herbs.Our eastern terrace features an outdoor conference room to encourage staff members to use the outdoor space throughout the workday. Our terraces are highly accessible and are intended to serve not only as gardens but as social and educational workspaces. Extending from the edible garden into the studio, a “harvest kitchen” and dining area facilitate the social communion between people over the bounty of nature that we believe is fundamental to our well-being.

What challenges did you face as you were incorporating WELL features? How did you solve them?
Pursuing WELL Certification was challenging because it is a living certification; that is, its achievement depends on the management of our studio over time rather than upon the completion of the project. Another difficulty we faced was undertaking the WELL Certification process when it was in its first version and the process of interpreting many aspects of the standard. As the new studio took shape, we reflected on what was important about our community’s culture and mission and were able to institutionalize our practice in a more rigorous way than we had before.

cookfox

Looking to the future:

What did you learn from WELL? What post-certification metrics can you share related to outcomes?
Working to implement WELL features reminded us of our mission to create an environmentally responsive design that fosters healthy environments, and guided our decisions about how we should use our studio space as an expression of these goals. WELL encouraged us to follow these ambitions, and to celebrate the spirit of our studio.

How has WELL Certification changed or improved your company culture or operations?
Upon completion of our studio, we had to revisit our office manual and our firm policies to reflect the space we would occupy and our day-to-day operations. Even simple updates, such as policies relating to the upkeep of our terraces, have had a cultural impact on the studio and the way we use our space. In addition to staff gatherings, we regularly host events in our Harvest area and terraces. These events afford us the opportunity to educate guests about our design goals by using our studio as a model for all future projects to emulate.

Project team: