Post-Occupancy Evaluation of the Biophilic Design in the Workplace for Health and Wellbeing

Abstract

There is mounting evidence suggesting that workplace design directly connects with workers’ health and wellbeing. Additionally, the personal status of the mind can affect subjective attitudes and feelings towards the environment. In this study, the impacts of biophilic design attributes in offices on workers’ health and wellbeing are examined. A new post-occupancy evaluation (POE) questionnaire is developed for evaluating the biophilic design for workplace health and wellbeing. A questionnaire and field observations of two green building offices in Singapore and Shenzhen, China, are performed. The main obtained results are: (i) the questionnaire results show that the workers have a moderately high evaluation of the biophilic attributes in the workplace for improving health and wellbeing; (ii) there are significant differences between the self-reported health and nature relatedness of various ages and genders. Furthermore, the present study provides designers with new weighted biophilic design guidelines, specifically for workplace design practices.