France is WELL
It was standing room only in the Palais des Congres – Porte Maillot in Paris. But that’s exactly the way this health and wellness-minded culture prefers it.
At Salon SIMI today, dozens of architects and designers, sustainability consultants and other real estate and corporate professionals took a stand in favor of building WELL. In a country that embraces a culture of health and epitomizes the enjoyment of life, French values exemplify the essence of the WELL Building Standard: to create an environment supportive of informed, healthy decisions, to offer a balance between work and life and to provide people the opportunity to thrive.
“The real estate industry in France intuitively understands how to build WELL,” said Sarah Welton, IWBI Vice President of Market Solutions. “The WELL Building Standard is the perfect tool to enable France’s focus on health and well-being to come to life.”
With 40 projects now engaged with WELL across the country including three certified projects, “France is leading the charge in Europe and making a clear statement about the value of wellness,” added Welton, who was joined onstage by representatives of Green Soluce, HRO France, G-ON, Sanofi and ARP Astrance. To date, all WELL projects here are offices, which has helped drive considerable impacts when it comes to advancing wellness in the workplace.
Attendees were eager to learn about what’s coming next for WELL in France, including new synergies with local green building rating systems and a forthcoming crosswalk with HQE in 2018. Building on existing collaborations with LEED, Green Star and BREEAM, the new crosswalk will provide strategies for interiors projects, existing buildings and new buildings that are seeking multiple certifications on environmental sustainability and health.
The WELL community also stood up to recognize early adopters as the first WELL Certified projects in France were awarded their Gold level plaques.
SCENEO, a 130,000 square-foot Core & Shell office project in Paris, was the first building in France, and across continental Europe, to be awarded WELL Certification. Led by the team at HRO and G-ON, the goal for the project was to be at the forefront of cutting-edge building science and technology through a dedicated focus on light, acoustics, air quality and active layouts, as well as incorporating nature into the indoor spaces. In addition to WELL, the project has been awarded BBC (Low Consumption Building), “Exceptional” HQE and BREEAM Excellent.
The WELL Certified SANOFI Le Carteret building in Lyon is a 200,000 square-foot New & Existing Interiors project. With the help of ARP Astrance, the building exemplifies SANOFI’s focus on health and well-being, not just for their clients, but also for the more than 1,400 employees at the project location. SANOFI promotes active transportation, subsidizes sports and fitness activities, provides a mobile application to help employees manage their diet and offers occupational health services on-site to support employees’ mental health.
Also recognized by IWBI today was Tours DUO for its Precertification at the Platinum level. Designed by Jean Nouvel for Ivanhoe Cambridge, the 1,130,211 square-foot DUO is the first office building in Paris precertified under the WELL Core & Shell Certification program. DUO has also been awarded HQE and LEED platinum certifications.
Sarah Welton closed the session with a call to action: “Think for a moment, how WELL is your space? Do the places where you live and work hinder or help your health? How can we use our spaces to bring health back to the forefront?” She concluded, “By implementing WELL, we are excited to be agents of public health. We invite you to join us.”
For more information about WELL projects in France, visit our online project directory.
