Best Tips To Follow For Building Healthy And Sustainable Offices

By Author: Rea Setia
Total Articles: 10
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Nowadays, sustainable and eco-friendly offices are in demand. These workspaces are preferred by employees as they provide a healthy environment to work in. It positively impacts employee performance and motivates them to do their work more efficiently. Furthermore, along with employees, designing a sustainable office has several benefits for the environment, future generations, and even the economy. It helps to make an office self-reliant and allows the workforce to adapt to different working conditions.

If you wish to make your office sustainable then you must start focusing on the 5 R's (reduce, reuse, recycle, repair, and rethink) to decrease the carbon footprint and create a healthy working space.

Thinking about where to start? Here are some beneficial tips to make your office more sustainable and eco-friendly:

1. Consider optimizing the structural grid
When it comes to building an office, a large amount of construction materials are used to carry out the process. Office architects from Mumbai assert that materials such as steel and concrete have a huge environmental footprint. However, one can ...
... reduce it by considering ways to minimize the use of these materials and exploring different construction techniques.

For instance, you can opt for cantilever slabs, instead of having columns at the perimeter, to achieve thinner floor plates. This would eliminate the need for edge beams and increase the overall span of the columns. This method can save about 15% of structural material and also aids in speeding up the process.

2. Increase flexibility to reduce material use in future
One of the productive ways to cut down material usage and embodied energy is to design a space that is flexible and adaptable. As an owner you can adopt flexible floor divisions with strategically positioned cores, appropriately sized support places and independently accessible tenant areas. This will significantly reduce the cost and construction effort.

Hence, it is important to incorporate these changes keeping in mind the future benefits and costs associated with each decision you make.

3. Implement natural designs and elements
Several office architects in Mumbai believe that incorporating biophilic design in the design plan such as natural lighting, openable windows, installing motion sensors, etc. are some good ideas to implement in the offices. You can even decorate the space with light colours and use compact fluorescent bulbs in dark spaces to give it a natural effect that soothes the eyes as well as the environment. Adequate illumination and ventilation are an integral part of an office building layout that prevents health complications and boosts the productivity of your employees.

Hence, integrating indoor plants is a great way to create a healthy workspace. Spaces such as green rooftops prove to be incredible hubs for social activities and entertainment.

Bottom line
Creating greener spaces is crucial to conserving energy and natural resources. In addition, building such offices contributes to sustainability and boosts economic welfare.

Furthermore, you can also consider staggering staircases and locating them towards the facade for emergencies. Furthermore, one can incorporate eco-friendly approaches within offices like creating monthly green challenges, proper disposal systems, lay off the thermostat, etc. for the greater good.