Health & Wellness
The built environment can profoundly impact the health and well-being of people. We seek to enhance connections to nature, improve air quality and access to daylight. Lake Flato’s unique approach to human-centered environments and biophilic design seeks to positively affect both human and ecological well-being.
February 16, 2025
Indoor Air Quality
We have a responsibility to go beyond code and push for innovative principles and materials that foster healthy environments. Contaminants such as volatile organic compounds and microbial pathogens contribute to a wide range of negative health outcomes. Lake Flato holistically addresses environmental health throughout the entire design and construction processes, focusing on fresh air and ventilation effectiveness, pollution source avoidance, filtration strategies, selecting materials free of carcinogens and chemicals of concern, virus spread prevention, cleaning best practices, minimization of surface transmission and construction management policies. In addition, post-occupancy sensors can monitor key indicator levels and ensure healthy indoor air quality.
Healthy Materials
We are committed to making informed decisions regarding the products we specify. Our approach to material selection avoids chemicals of concern and ingredients with adverse health impacts from our materials library, specifications and internal continuing education program. Lake Flato has endorsed the use of Health Product Declarations (HPD), an open standard for manufacturers to accurately disclose product contents using a standard, consistent and transparent format. We champion the standard’s ability to increase the availability, accuracy and transparency of reported product content and associated health information by providing a common language. As an endorser, Lake Flato has been asking manufacturers to adhere to the guidelines of the HPD and other third-party healthy material programs and provide the required documentation to our firm. The standard supports our efforts to make informed decisions about material selection and its impact on human and environmental health.
Biophilia and Interior Environments
Indoor environmental quality can be enhanced through connections to nature, access to daylighting, and post occupancy evaluation. Biophilia is at the core of Lake Flato’s design principles as we actively seek to connect people to the natural environment through our building design. Biophilic design provides us with the foundation to positively affect both human and ecological well-being, creating places of joy, inspiration and interconnection. We strive to reinforce our connections to nature through interior environments that offer a porosity of indoor-outdoor connections, fresh air, natural light, and views to nature.
The work of Lake Flato becomes truly alive when it is full of human activity and cultural celebration, when nature overlaps with the manmade, and when the temporal qualities of sun, light, heat, air, and living species are integral elements in design.Vivan Loftness, FAIA
Carnegie Mellon Professor of Architecture