Lida Lewis

One of the first WELL APs, WELL Faculty, and Fitwel Ambassadors, Lida is an architect by training and an interior architect in practice with a strong focus on sustainability and its impact on the people in the spaces we design. Lida utilizes her 15 years of design and sustainability expertise to spearhead thought leadership and efforts incorporating the best of scientific and medical research into design strategies across all of her work. She currently serves on the USGBC-NCR Market Leadership Advisory Board, as a WELL Faculty member, was a reviewer for the WELL AP test development, an SME reviewer for the WELL Community Standard and WELL v2 and serves as an SME for Greenbuild in Health and Wellbeing. A firm believer that the design of space has a profound impact on physical and mental health, she supports all who work with her with the wide range of knowledge and tools at her disposal to truly elevate design and the occupant experience.

WHY I JOINED THE WELL COMMUNITY
The why of it all, the understanding of how not just pretty, but great space is made, fires me up. I want to know more, and because of this have been studying concepts in salutogenic design, environmental psychology, and workplace strategy. I devour anything on the intersection of design and psychology with avid interest. I’m drawn to anything that can help both myself and my clients understand how design strategies can better support their customers, their employees, and themselves. For years now I have found the challenge of incorporating a measure of sustainability into every project a rewarding one, and I’m particularly interested in how the WELL Building Standard seems poised to combine my loves of so many fields (it rather makes me feel as if I’ve “found my people”).

WHAT WELLNESS MEANS TO ME
Wellness, to me, means building my own, and my community’s, resilience–and my understanding of how to strengthen it. I constantly research and develop my knowledge on a variety of Wellbeing topics. I’ve done a lot of work on my sleep hygiene–for example, I have enabled several circadian filters on my devices, and purchased a bulb for my bedside light which is color corrected to filter out that 480nm light. I’m working within my firm to push forward initiatives and discussions around promoting and elevating women in the workplace, and finding ways to improve the wellbeing of my colleagues through HR and operations policies. I’ve also started making my own kombucha to build a better microbiome–premium brains need premium fuel. Biophilia is another focus for me–my collection of plants is ever growing, and my new desk lamp is filled with shells I’ve collected on beach trips to the Outer Banks in NC!