Blog
3 pillars of sustainability & their relationship to wellbeing
I catch myself saying it; using the words ‘sustainability’ and ‘wellbeing’ separately as additions to each other rather than expressing the understanding that wellbeing is part of sustainability. It’s a journey of education, all of us are going through it, and the...
University of Helsinki – becoming ‘a better place’
We are working on a project for the University of Helsinki, in collaboration with Jaana Tarma at Crastinus Service Design on redesigning teaching and learning classrooms. The approach is very collaborative, involving a Pedagogy research team and in-house architects...
Should staff have their wellbeing supported?
With wellbeing becoming an issue more and more talked about also in the workplace, we were wondering: Is it ok to not agree that your staff should have their wellbeing supported? Our Design & Sustainability Director, Elina Grigoriou, has put her thoughts on...
Ethics and the Power of Design
I was flying back to London from Athens this spring and flicked through the airline’s online business magazine. The topics it covered were current and ‘hot’ with the stand out issues of Ethics, Wellbeing and Tech in all sorts of sectors and business types. The...
AI and fields of camomile
After a very long time, the memory came back: delicate camomile flowers growing in the middle of the mud track on the last stretch before arriving home. This was when I was growing up in Greece, in the middle of nowhere and flowers grew everywhere in spring. It was a...
Hierarchy of interior features on occupant wellbeing
During research for Elina's book "Wellbeing in Interiors" (RIBA Publishing), and the concurrent research for and application of our methodology of "A Better Place", she came to realise there is a need to inform the order of priority amongst interior features. For...
Takeaways – New York Wellbeing Workshop – Feb 2018
In January, our New York based colleague Amy attended the ‘Thriving: Health in the Built Environment’ workshop hosted by the International Living Future Institute (ILFI). The session was located at the New School in Manhattan, part of the esteemed Parson’s School of...
Elina’s January 15km Swim Pledge – What was it really like?
As Elina achieved her goal to swim 15km throughout January and raised just over £6,000 so far, we’ve had non-cold water swimmers ask what the experience is actually like, so in Elina’s own words: I got up at 6am every day. It’s dark. Temperatures ranged between 2-5C...
Takeaways – Wellbeing & Economics Event (Jan 2018)
On 24th January, Elina Grigoriou, Simon Rubinsohn and Jonathan Schifferes got together to discuss 'Wellbeing and Economics - How to make strategic value-based decisions' and these are our takeaways: Simon Rubinsohn, Chief Economist at RICS very honestly opened the...
100% Design – How can design fight climate change?
We invited a friend and fellow design enthusiast Andrew Prosser from FizzArch to share insights and thoughts from the talk Elina participated in at 100% Design this year. The talk was organised to raise awareness of the Sustainable Development Goals set by the UN in...