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GHP 076: Green healthy offices for Bolton Group headquarters, Milano, IT
160 Plays11 months ago
Welcome to episode 076 of the Green Healthy Places podcast in which we discuss the the of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and hospitality today.
I’m your host Matt Morley and in this episode I’m in Milan, Italy but the tables have been turned. This time around I’m on the other side of the microphone, answering the questions.
In front of me is Stefania Lorenzi from the marketing department of the Bolton Group.
This recording took place in their via Pirelli offices, close to the Central Station in Milan, where I’ve been working with their executive team and project architects on implementing a range of green, healthy office strategies over recent months.
The Bolton Group is a family-owned, Italian multinational with over 11,000 employees in 60 different offices.
They are present in 150 countries with over 60 household brands in the portfolio, from products for the home, to food, adhesives, personal care and beauty care.
We discuss the basics of nature-inspired biophilic design, its relationship with sustainability, the benefits of a nature-infused indoor work environment and some tips on how to integrate a little biophilia into our daily routines at home.
This is just a 15-minute chat, nothing complicated but hopefully relevant as a basic primer on the key principles I’m working with when creating a green, healthy office building.
Thanks to the Bolton Group for sharing the audio, this is a company with a strong sustainability program and genuine interest in implementing a healthy building strategy at their company headquarters, so kudos to them!
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to Episode 76 of the Green Healthy Places Podcast, in which we discuss the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and hospitality today. I'm your host, Matt Morley, and in this episode I'm in Milan, Italy, but the tables have turned this time.
Interview with Matt Morley
00:00:22
Speaker
I'm on the other side of the microphone answering the questions. In front of me is Stefania Lorenzi from the Marketing Department of the Bolton Group. This recording took place in their Villa Perelli offices close to the Stazione Centrale central station in Milano, where I've been working with their executive team and project architects on implementing a range of green, healthy office strategies over recent months.
00:00:48
Speaker
The Bolton Group
Bolton Group's Green Strategy
00:00:49
Speaker
is a family-owned Italian multinational with over 11,000 employees in 60 different offices around the world. The company is present in 150 countries and has over 60 household brands in its portfolio, from household goods to food, adhesives, personal care, and beauty care.
00:01:10
Speaker
We discussed the basics of nature inspired biophilic design, its relationship with sustainability, the benefits of a nature-infused indoor work environment, and some tips on how to integrate a little biophilia into our daily routines at home.
Exploring Biophilic Design
00:01:27
Speaker
So this is just a 15-minute chat, nothing complicated, but hopefully relevant as a basic primer on the key principles I'm working with when creating a green, healthy office building.
00:01:38
Speaker
So thanks to the Bolton Group for sharing the audio. This is a company with a real interest in implementing a healthy building strategy at their company headquarters. It's been a real pleasure working with them thus far. Check them out online at boltengroup.net. Here we go. Enjoy the show.
00:02:06
Speaker
Hi, Boltonians!
Matt Morley's Background and Companies
00:02:07
Speaker
Welcome to Bolton Beats, our corporate podcast. I'm Stefania Lorenzo, Group Communications Specialist, and I'm here today with a very special guest, Matt Morley, Wellbeing and Sustainability Consultant.
00:02:19
Speaker
And today with Matt, we will talk about a very interesting topic that is how we can integrate a green and healthy approach to our work spaces. Welcome Matt, welcome to the podcast. Hi everyone, great to be here. So first of all, can you introduce yourself to our audience?
00:02:37
Speaker
Sure, no worries. My name is Matt, Matt Morley. I'm based in Barcelona, Spain. I'm originally from London, studied here in Milan, and then went on to begin my career in real estate in about 2004, working first with real estate developers and hotel groups in a more creative role, then working in-house on a large development on the Adriatic Coast in Montenegro. That was another, you know, five years of my life.
00:03:05
Speaker
and then slowly began integrating a bit more of my own personal passion and interests around well-being and sustainability in the existing skill set that I had developed in real estate and hotels. The output of that was that I ended up setting up a company of my own.
00:03:25
Speaker
called Biophilico that offers wellness design and biophilic design services to real estate developers, landlords, building owners and tenants of buildings as well as hotels. And then that led me in 2022 to set up a second business really called Green Healthy Places that is much more focused on pure consultancy. There I combine
00:03:52
Speaker
sustainable design theory and strategies and healthy building strategies. So in some cases I found with Biofilico there was a request for us to really design spaces and to be the creative lead on small projects or spaces within a larger project.
00:04:11
Speaker
And with Green Healthy Places, we would take out all of the creative role and we focus purely on the consultancy piece. Why? Because there are some projects such as with Bolton Milano, where the architectural team or the client has already chosen their lead designer.
00:04:30
Speaker
And so in that case, it's me plus a different number two. Rather than working with a designer, I then work with a research assistant. And we're much more focused on things like researching sustainable materials,
00:04:45
Speaker
and other strategies to improve the indoor air quality. And we are advising, bringing specialist knowledge to the project, but the architect and interior designer maintains full control. And I'm finding them both. They're slightly different brains that I'm using. One's more creative, one's more strategic.
00:05:06
Speaker
But
Bolton Project Details
00:05:07
Speaker
they're both coming from a place or the same value system, which is really about the belief in the power and importance of a connection to nature by a failure and the role of healthy buildings and green buildings in the real estate industry today.
00:05:25
Speaker
So as you said before, you were recently involved in the renovation process of our Ed Quarter in Naviapirale, Milan. Can you tell us a little bit more your process, like the choices that you made for our building and in general, what's the reasoning behind your work for Bolton?
00:05:46
Speaker
So in projects like this, I have a toolkit or toolbox of things, strategies that I can bring to a project and I know that perhaps not all of them will be relevant or useful, but enough of them will be. And in this case,
00:06:05
Speaker
We're doing an element of biophilia, so we're creating green spaces integrating plants into the offices, but we're also looking at how we could potentially do something around blue biophilia. So the sea, the oceans. Inspired by the sea, exactly, based on the corporate brand and its connection to sea, particularly to fish, the fishing industry.
00:06:31
Speaker
So that allows us to personalise the biophilia specifically to this project. We're also looking at healthy building strategies. We've done a lot of work around the indoor air quality. Part of that was based on the quality of the filtration system and the ventilation rates in the building. And then my part specifically has been around
00:06:54
Speaker
detailed analysis of all the materials that are going into the furniture, the flooring, basically anything that's coming into this refurbishment project we have analyzed and dug into trying to find out if there's anything in there
00:07:11
Speaker
that could be considered even remotely toxic or harmful to the indoor quality air. And we then make sure that everything going in is as clean, green and healthy as possible. And then one of the effects of that beyond minimising the environmental impact of this office refurbishment is also to create a healthy indoor environment. So maximising the quality of the indoor air so that people spending time in here know that they are breathing
00:07:39
Speaker
the purest indoor air possible. It's never going to be like being in a forest or sitting on a beach or up a mountain, but we can get pretty close. With the help of some engineers, we can get pretty close and so a lot of our focus here
00:07:55
Speaker
with the project in Milano has been around that and we're also looking at a healthy building certification system where we would basically go for a sort of an exam or a qualification that then gives a bit more structure to some of the healthy building strategies and basically helps to push us and to achieve more around
00:08:18
Speaker
improving the quality of the experience for workers in the building, trying to really make it as pleasant and obviously healthy, but a productive space in which they feel looked after and that they enjoy coming to. And obviously that then connects with human resources as well as the sustainability demands of the corporation itself.
00:08:42
Speaker
That's
Understanding Biophilic Design
00:08:43
Speaker
super fascinating. I was wondering, can you explain a little bit better to our listeners what biophilic design means?
00:08:51
Speaker
Sure, so it comes from the concept of biophilia, biophilia, love of nature. There was a theory, an academic theory that emerged in the 1980s from a Harvard biologist called Edward O. Wilson. He was the first to really coin the concept and essentially it's based on the idea that we have over two million years of evolutionary history when we were completely in contact with the seasons, with the outdoor world.
00:09:19
Speaker
We were fully engaged. All of our senses were completely engaged in survival and that meant understanding and reading your environment. It's only very, very recently on that scale, if you think of two million years, the last maybe five thousand years after the agricultural revolution when we stopped being nomadic tribes and then industrial revolution the last three or four hundred years when we suddenly become this indoor species,
00:09:46
Speaker
We're not spending time outside. We're not looking up at the stars except on holiday. We have to go on holiday to spend time really connected with nature. And so biophilic design is a way to rebalance that mismatch. So basically our genetic
00:10:02
Speaker
history says we're an animal that should be connected to nature. Our modern day life is completely disconnected, or very often disconnected from nature. And so biophilic design attempts to create a bridge between those two worlds, attempts to bring the outside world in to create spaces that are more connected visually, multi-sensory, connected with nature.
Benefits of Biophilic Design
00:10:27
Speaker
And are there any measurable positive impacts on the well-being of the people involved in a biophilic space? Yes, so there have been plenty of studies, including one I did myself with the University of Essex in 2017 in London. We had 100 respondents in a space that we had completely designed for biophilia. It was all green, birdsong.
00:10:53
Speaker
all kinds of aromatherapy in there and invited people in to spend up to 60 minutes during their lunch hour. And the results were very clear. It's primarily around, let's say, productivity and concentration levels. So it is a restorative effect. If you go in in sort of the early afternoon when perhaps you're feeling a bit tired, these people coming in from offices nearby were able to spend 30 to 60 minutes.
00:11:17
Speaker
they left feeling considerably more energized, positive, and less stressed. So it tends to be around reducing anxiety, increasing productivity and concentration, and a general sense of well-being or what we say in English is vitality, which is just that sense of, yeah, like a purpose, like today's going to be a good day.
00:11:39
Speaker
So if I can give you even just 10% more of that feeling from spending a half hour in a biophilic design space, that impact is good for you and ultimately good for the business that has created that biophilic space. It's a win-win situation. That's the plan. Yeah, it's amazing. That's at least how I sell it. And going more into like the fun stuff, like when you have to plan a space, you know, an office,
00:12:07
Speaker
How do you choose the plants that go in in that space? Why a certain species is a yes and why another is a no? So if we work on the basis of plants being able to improve the quality of the air, so they are air purifying plant species, there are really eight to ten of those species that we would work with.
00:12:30
Speaker
And strangely, if you think about an office here in Milan in the winter or an office in Barcelona in summer, in an indoor environment, the temperature is usually about the same, about 21, 22 degrees. Same in your home right now, same as someone's home in Beijing tomorrow. That doesn't change. What changes is the availability of certain plants, the amount of light exposure that they get in each specific location. But we're working with the sort of NASA approved
00:12:59
Speaker
air purifying plants as our baseline and then we're trying to add some more personalities. So we start on the premise of air purification and then we add in a little bit more of that own specific personality which comes really from the specific supplier of the plants. So while the architect will identify the spaces on the floor plan where I could potentially create a space for biophilia as in putting some plants,
00:13:26
Speaker
I'll then take that floor plan and do an initial version of the size of the pots, potentially the type or material of the pot, the type of plant put in there, what lighting we have if we need any more or we need to improve the lighting in that space and then in the end it ultimately goes to the local
00:13:43
Speaker
garden center or plant specialist who gets into the real details around exactly how to pair and match and group plants together. It's a collaboration as well. It's very collaborative and there's a lot of specific knowledge required.
00:14:00
Speaker
Well, I can't wait to see the final result of how the new workspace will look like. So
Tips for Biophilic Design at Home
00:14:07
Speaker
we're about to wrap up our episode, but I have one last question for you that I'm very curious about. If you had to give us some tips on how to integrate biophilia in our homes and especially in the places where we work, when we do remote working, what would you suggest?
00:14:31
Speaker
You can think beyond just plants, although obviously that's the first step. Bringing indoor plants into your space is a way to effectively decorate in a biophilic style without actually changing the wallpaper.
00:14:47
Speaker
But you can also do what's called indirect representations of nature. So while plants or even putting out your beautiful organic bunch of beetroot as an almost like an objet d'art, which is what I like to do in my kitchen, I kind of create little mini sculptures with the fruit and vegetables that I bring back. I then have large format prints of natural landscapes on my walls.
00:15:14
Speaker
I have forest aromatherapy going on so that's usually pine, rosemary, mint to create a multi-sensory experience. I've got my lights set up with a smart timer. I've got representing sunlight tones and intensities in the morning and then it reduces intensity and goes to a warmer orange color in the evening as if it was sun rise and sunset.
00:15:39
Speaker
And so really I'm kind of trying to recreate as if I was outside in nature in a forest, except I'm in my top floor apartment in Barcelona. So it's a kind of, it's a hack. It's a health hack in a way. We're trying to get to the end results and it's okay to use technology. So the reality is that it can be a combination of the very basic and most natural elements we have,
00:16:04
Speaker
being surrounded by plants and wood and cork and natural materials, linen, cotton in the home, but then also an element of wellness technology. That's okay too. We're in the 21st century. Nobody's saying we're not going back to live in a cave. It's not happening. So we take the best of what's available to us and we combine high-tech and low-tech. Okay.
00:16:27
Speaker
Wow, so I know what to do tonight. I will change my house. There you go. Thank you very much, Matt. It was full of very insightful topics. Thank you for being here. Do you have any final comments or suggestions? I do. Yeah, you know, I think the fact that I'm here and the fact that Bolton as a group have
00:16:52
Speaker
incorporated someone who is specifically focused on the well-being of staff in these office spaces and on the environmental impact that the Bolton offices are having. The fact that that is happening I think is really important because you know this just wasn't happening 10 years ago and
00:17:14
Speaker
for big corporations, it's an important step and it's something that needs to happen across the board over the next decade and it's slowly, slowly moving in that direction. I just wanted to underline how valuable I think that is because it's not happening everywhere. Bolton have made that step and it is really, really positive and I think reflects
00:17:35
Speaker
Internally the value system that's driving it both in terms of the sustainability values, but also from a human resource perspective. The well-being, you know, of the collaborators. Thank you very much, Matt, for being here today. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. And I'll see you at the next episode of Bolton Beats.