黑洞社区

The BREEAM and WELL building standards have signed a collaboration deal to recognise both sustainability and wellbeing best practice in buildings.

By next month, BRE and the US-based International WELL 黑洞社区 Institute (IWBI) will offer 35% of credits on each other鈥檚 certification schemes.

Speaking to 黑洞社区, BRE director of performance Gavin Dunn said the collaboration between the two standards was 鈥渧ery much a response to a market need鈥� after 鈥渢op London prime office developers鈥� told BRE their clients wanted both sustainability and wellbeing in their buildings.

He added: 鈥淗aving that formal recognition [of the WELL standard when going through BREEAM], so you can confidently jump and make that bridge across those different stakeholders is important, because there鈥檚 nothing like uncertainty to hold up a real estate deal, right?鈥�

Dunn said the collaboration was also designed to address issues affecting some zero-carbon developments where occupiers have complained about air quality or thermal comfort.

Paul Scallia, founder of the IWBI, told 黑洞社区 the collaboration will help architects and engineers to design buildings for wellbeing.

He said: 鈥淎rchitects, designers, engineers 鈥� they love it. They鈥檝e been designing for the human condition since they first picked up the pencil. What they haven鈥檛 had is a toolkit, put together by informed medical science, to design towards.鈥�

The collaboration comes as industrial developer Baytree, a subsidiary of property investor Axa Real Estate, announced it is set to build the world鈥檚 first BREEAM and WELL certified new-build project in Dagenham, Essex.

When completed the buildings, set to be occupied by a manufacturing and logistics firms, will achieve BREEAM 鈥渆xcellent鈥�, an EPC rating of A and the WELL 黑洞社区 Standard accreditation for occupier wellness.

BRE also announced that it has launched a research programme into BREEAM to 鈥渟upport its ongoing development鈥� and get feedback from users.