Are you in an unhealthy o ce relationship? If you spend more waking hours in your oce building than with your significant other, you and your workspace hadOR better be a good match. Studies have shown that oce buildings aren't benign containers but active contributors to good — or poor — health, mood and productivity. Your oce can do you right or wrong in many ways, till demolition do you part. By Bonnie Berkowitz and Laura Stanton

AIR QUALITY AIR QUALITY Leaving you gasping: “Sick Providing a breath of fresh air: building syndrome” is largely a Modern systems circulate at least relic of the 1970s and ’80s, when UV filters 20 cubic feet of fresh air per oce buildings were sealed for UNHEALTHY HEALTHIER minute per person, four times the energy eciency without adequate amount common during the sick- filtration and ventilation. But even More fresh air building era. Ultraviolet filters kill now, paint, furniture, carpet, Gases Better air mold microbes that grow on air handling pesticides and cleaning products and smells Mold conditioning coils. Buildings just can emit gases that a ect air smell better without smoking quality. A 2012 report found that rooms, and “green” cleaning 9 percent of asthma cases among supplies are more common. Some adults who had ever been buildings have even gone retro, employed were work-related. with windows that actually open.

LIGHTING LIGHTING Artificial light Putting you in a bad light: In many with a dark side Room with Clear space for Letting the sunshine in: One of buildings, natural light gets no My window! collaboration . . . Kampschroer’s mantras is All MINE! a view — farther than the executive oces for everyone! Blinds “Democratize daylight.” Allowing control I see the that monopolize the windows. light! sunlight to penetrate farther into Fluorescent tubes put out light that glare. work areas saves energy and doesn’t match the natural spectrum, enhances circadian rhythms as Z Z Z Z Z reducing alertness, darkening mood Z Z Z more people experience natural Z Boss out and impairing nighttime sleep, said Z cycles in color and light quality. Z Z here with Z Z Z Z Z Shading, screens and blinds Kevin Kampschroer, an innovator in Z Z Z Z troops Z Z Z sustainable federal oce design. Z control glare and heat.

ERGONOMICS & MOVEMENT Stand-up ERGONOMICS & MOVEMENT Holding you back: Constant Brow- guy Turning you loose: A workspace beating that lets you alternate between sitting is just one problem. A Lunch in boss Back from lunch Open standing and sitting is a good start. building’s design can encourage cubicle in the atrium people to move, or not, said stairs Open staircases in sunny atriums environmental psychologist Judith Lunch? He got lunch? encourage walking from floor to Heerwagen. If your only options are floor. Clever designers may hide laps around the cube farm or the elevators, or program some to climbing the dank stairwell with the Chained disallow short trips, Kampschroer slimy handrail, you’re probably to desk said. Rooop gardens make going to stay put. people want to get up and go. Hand sanitizer HYGIENE HYGIENE Great. Achoo! I don’t Making you sick: A 2011 Danish He’s gone Leaving you alone: Most germs I’m home if you need study found that people who viral. him. are passed through the air, a worked in open spaces took Hack! need me. downside to those low partitions. Cough! 62 percent more sick days than Telecommuting can reduce this those in oces or high-walled Wheeze! problem by letting people stay cubicles. Additional studies have Take Or home when they’re just a little ill, shown that people who show up to one... not! experts said. Common sense work ill drain company resources I’m applies, too. Wash your hands because they are less productive roasting! oen and reconsider that dip into and pass along germs to others. the communal candy dish.

Mmm, TEMPERATURE cool TEMPERATURE Running hot or cold: Heerwagen Staying just right: Cutting- said that in tests of ambient edge oces are finding ways to temperature, half of all workers allow every person to control said they were too hot and the And the microclimate at his or her other half said they were too cold. I’m desk. Solutions can be simple, Personal preference varies too freezing! Mmm, such as air di users that much for a one-temperature-fits-all THEN warm mitigate dras and tiny fans approach, especially in and heaters, or as complex as Washington, where some people wiring climate controls into still wear wool suits in summer. Glass oce every workspace. Rumble! he said... Whirrrrrrr ACOUSTICS ACOUSTICS Bringing in the noise: If a Silence the Keeping quiet: Kampschroer said co-worker’s phone rant or the machines! good oce design allows people copier’s whir puts you on edge, to escape noise while also giving you are not alone. A 2010 study Epic! them space to collaborate. Closed of white-collar workers found Let’s go into the rooms should be available for that background noise contrib- Zone of Silence to private phone calls or meetings, uted to a measurable rise in Ka-chunk!Ka-chunk! discuss this! and laptops let people pick up and stress as shown by heart rates, move together — or apart. Oces cortisol levels and an impaired with low partitions tend to be ability to concentrate. Some of quieter, because people know the most distracting sounds can they can be heard. But those come from high-walled cubicles wide-open plans that provide great that give inhabitants a false light and airflow need ways to sense of privacy. dampen noise.

VISUAL Natural VISUAL Stuck in shades of gray: Wrong kind patterns Coloring your world: Some Monotone is bad decor. Even of nature variety in color, pattern and worse is a jarring jumble that rises Natural texture is ideal, without descend- to visual toxicity. (Yep, that’s a Gray is NOT colors ing into chaos. Heerwagen the new black! thing.) One building Heerwagen Natural advocates biophilic design, using visited had so many clashing Even the plants air cleaner colors and patterns that are found colors and abstract patterns that are beige. in nature to reduce stress. workers became physically ill.

Sources: Kevin Kampschroer, director of federal high-performance green buildings for the General Services Administration; environmental psychologist Judith Heerwagen of the GSA; National Institute of Building Sciences’ Whole Building Design Guide; Center for the Built Environment at Berkeley; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health; Environmental Protection Agency; “E ects of the physical work environment on physiological measures of stress” by Julian F. ayer, et al., for the GSA and National Institutes of Health THE WASHINGTON POST