University of Melbourne architect and civil engineer Christhina Candido has been named an International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) ‘Changemaker’.
Associate Professor Candido leads the SHE (Sustainable and Healthy Environments) Lab in the Melbourne School of Design, which develops a program of applied research aimed at understanding how the built environment can be designed to improve sustainability and health.
Out of the 25,000 WELL Accredited professionals from 128 countries globally, only 50 individuals received an award in 2024 and only ten under the Changemaker category. She was the only academic to win across all categories and the only Asia-Pacific-based Changemaker awarded in 2024. She was also one of the first signatories of the International Healthy Building Accord led by IWBI in 2024.
In 2020 she led the first educational partnership with IWBI with the launch of the University of Melbourne’s Graduate Certificate in Design for Health and Wellbeing, which resulted in receipt of a WELL Faculty Community Award in 2021 for sustained contributions to teaching and research in healthy buildings.
Before that, she was the only Australian academic to be appointed to the inaugural IWBI’s Global Research Advisory Board and WELL Faculty in 2019.
She says since that time, her “unique and ground-breaking studies” in WELL-certified workplaces within Asia-Pacific gained global attention within academia and industry.
WELL is an industry standard that measures attributes of buildings that impact the health of occupants by looking at the seven factors, or concepts, of: air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort and mind.
Associate Professor Candido’s research in the certified workplaces has three main points of focus, she says.
“Firstly, it addresses a critical shortage of evidence from WELL-certified workplaces globally. To put into context, there are more that 370 million square metres of projects registered for WELL certification around the world, and the number of WELL-certified buildings in the Asia Pacific doubled in 2023 to reach nearly 80 million square metres.
“Despite the large-scale and rapid uptake of WELL globally, research is yet to follow suit. To date, only seven papers have been published in peer-reviewed journals with data from certified offices. I led the research for two of these seven papers. The peer-reviewed paper published in 2020 was the very first in the world to capture and report on end-users’ satisfaction, perceive productivity and health in WELL-certified workplaces.
“The second peer-reviewed paper, published in 2023 reports findings from the largest dataset ever published on the topic and compares results from WELL-certified workplaces against high-performance Asia-Pacifc counterparts. This research had significant influence within APAC becoming a blueprint for consultants when presenting the business case to clients.
Secondly – she says – by consolidating a longitudinal database of successful case studies, her research demonstrated and informed industry on successful implementation of designs and environmental performance strategies that work from the end-user perspective.
“The increase in adoption of WELL certification in the corporate real estate market globally has seen organisations wanting evidence of return-on-investment for meeting environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria and targets.
“As such, more recent work led by SHE Lab and spearheaded by PhD candidate Cida Ghosn and Associate Professor Georgia Warren-Myers has involved mapping the decision-making drivers behind WELL certification adoption within the APAC region and the importance of health and wellbeing strategies from talent attraction and retention.”
Thirdly, Associate Professor Candido’s research has documented the user experience of WELL workplaces since the very first projects achieved the certification, dating back to 2017.
“The value of this work lies in documenting the changes (if any) in end-user experiences, and this then creates a body of evidence for the benefits of environmental certifications such as WELL and Green Star.”
First published on 29 May 2024.
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