Altis Project is launching an important research project called Wellbeing in the Workplace, headed up by Nicoletta Brancaccio, Head of Research at Altis and PhD candidate at the University of the West of England, whose research primarily explores the relationship between space and the behavioral responses of its occupants. 

It could be interesting for architects to understand how we code space, how we build the reality around us and how these two processes together can not only influence our behaviour but also our well-being. Altis is now committed to a very intriguing and necessary investigation which brings together well-being at work and the workplace itself, analyzing how we can start building more responsive architecture and interiors that consider emotional responses, background, possible neurodiversities and everything about employees. It will also take into consideration factors that can influence, impact or enhance well-being. 

This complex investigation started with a very simple question. What can architecture do for people? Not only to improve their productivity, but also to empower them, to make them feel better at work. So, what is the role of architecture? We code space according to the possibility of movements, but mostly we code space through the coding of discontinuities. 

Discontinuities are the interruption of the blank. So if we face a white wall, a plain surface, something that doesn’t present any type of continuity, we will not see anything. There won’t be any type of activation in our brain. 

When we have a black line, a break or anything that interrupts a blank, that’s when we start seeing, meaning we start coding the space. Construction of reality is something completely different, and it’s important to mention that we do not codify reality, we build it. 

This means that what one individual sees is not what other people see. We all picture reality in our own personal way, and this picture is influenced by our background, culture, experience, and by meanings that we have already attributed to objects.  Gibson would talk about affordance; affordance is the intrinsic power of an object to suggest an action towards it.  

So, object and space have the power of suggesting action. They have a meaning, but this meaning is attributed by us. The real challenge nowadays is not only to understand these meanings, previously attributed and therefore work with them, it’s much bigger.  

How can we attribute new meanings, new meanings more related to well-being. According to Seligman, probably one of the most interesting theorists about well-being, There are five building blocks that enable flourishing – Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment (hence PERMA™) – and there are strategies to increase each, This model is called PERMA, acronymous of the 5 blocks. 

Architecture can make/help people engage with space, can build new meanings we associate with space, and in the same time can also host relations. So, architecture actually has an impact on all the five building blocks theorized by Seligman. What we will do within this research is try to understand exactly where architecture can intervene in the process of coding and construction of reality, working together with people to improve the quality of their experience at work. 

Along this journey, we will interview professionals, psychologists, and many people that have extensive experience in the workplace and that are already working on the well-being of employees.   

We will try to understand not only what the main emotions or the main feelings are related to workplace, but will also explain the difference between feelings and emotions, and how they are related to certain types of spaces. We will analyze how we architects can take this sort of granted and already discovered knowledge and work together with other disciplines to improve the quality of the experience for employees and all the people that live the workplace.