Pandemic Post

You’ve probably come across the following statistic before: we spend 90% of our time indoors, or inside buildings.  The source of this oft-cited data comes from an August 1989 Report to Congress on Indoor Air Quality, which was generated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.  Fast-forward 30+ years later to spring 2020, and what the researchers failed to account for was a scenario in which we, in fact, find ourselves spending something closer to 99.9% of our time indoors due to a global pandemic and all its glorious stay at home orders.

In cities like New York, where our office is based, the density of the built environment exacerbated this condition in a pre-pandemic world.  And for those weathering the crisis in the city and beyond, indoor confinement has become the new normal.  This intersection of health crisis and “indoorness” has led us to focus on our role as designers in creating indoor spaces - and the direct relationship between our choices and the healthy or unhealthy interior living environments that result.  

There are (3) primary categories of building “stuff” that contribute to the healthiness or unhealthiness of an interior space, and they are:

  1. Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (better known as HVAC)

  2. Building Materials

  3. Furniture, Fixtures, and Equipment (commonly referred to as FF&E)

You and your electronic devices, tchotchkes, books, pets, alligators, food, clothing, shoes, dead skin cells, hair, and whatever you dragged in on your feet also have a big impact on the interior environment, but we are putting the blame for these contaminants squarely onto our clients and their post-occupancy liberties.  Like that time you used spray paint to “install a mural” over your natural stone backsplash.  We won’t name names, but you know who you are.

While we long ago accepted that we can’t control our clients, what we can influence are those three primary categories mentioned above.  We are serious about delivering a project that will yield a high-performance space, and for us - healthy interior air quality is essential.  With this series, we are starting out with #1, which takes a closer look at how we incorporate the design of air management systems (HVAC) into high performance projects.