Our Buildings Need To Make Us Healthier: Glass Might Be The Answer

We spend over 90% of our time indoors, and it’s making us unhealthy. Whilst staying inside has been a powerful tool in the fight against coronavirus over the past two years, spending less time outside - and therefore being unable to reap the benefits of daylight - may well have proven detrimental to our health in other ways.

New data has even found a link between European populations with the highest death rates from COVID-19 - including Spain and Italy - and (perhaps surprisingly, given their respective climates), vitamin D deficiency. It’s thought that as changes in lifestyle have led people to spend more time indoors, lower levels of vitamin D among populations, even in sunny countries, is impacting our immune systems and our health.

The thing is, home working and ‘indoor heavy’ lifestyles aren’t going anywhere. As a result, architecture has a more important role in our health than ever, and with natural light a crucial part of our wellbeing, glazing and glass could be the most important factor in how our homes impact our health…

The Benefit of Natural Light for our Health

At Cantifix, we’ve spent many years keeping a keen eye on the scientific research conducted on the link between natural light and health. Indeed, we’ve even undertaken our own research, in partnership with the University of Oxford to further our understanding of this enormously important, but often overlooked topic.?

We know that there are numerous benefits of natural light for our health. Our bodies thrive on it; it’s our primary source of Vitamin D, and it governs our circadian rhythms through hormone cycles. It impacts our energy levels and ability to focus and even impacts our mood and digestion. Exposure to natural light has also been shown to have a positive effect on productivity and reduces the effects of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)

There’s no real substitute for ‘proper’ daylight, either - one study found that 50% of patients with wintertime depression improve with the help of natural light, as opposed to only 25% with artificial lamps. With our indoor lives now dominating our existence, if we want to reap the essential impact of sunlight on our physical and mental wellbeing, the secret could lie in glazing…

The Power of Glass

The material that can have the most significant impact on how our built environment impacts our lifestyles is glass. Glazing offers the potential to complement interior spaces, and has a crucial role to play in everything from ventilation, temperature control, and access to light, to our connection with nature. With the right specialist knowledge, these factors can be controlled through glazing design with an astonishing level of precision.?

Particularly when it comes to ensuring an interior space has plenty of wellbeing-boosting daylight, glazing installations are nearly always the most effective, and often the only, solution. But it’s so important that architects consider the vast scope and potential of modern glass, not simply approaching the inclusion of glass solutions on autopilot

Using glass as a construction material, the installations which provide access to daylight aren’t limited to just windows and doors, but also to glazed links, corners and even frameless glass - a glazing solution that removes every last obscuring detail to maximise daylight.

Light and wellness architecture

A statistic we often reflect on at Cantifix is the fact that the average person spends around 92% of their day indoors, whilst around 12% of UK households have no access to a garden.

The evidence is in, and like many forward-thinking architects and designers, we truly believe that buildings in the future must be designed to do more than simply provide a backdrop for our home and work lives, but need to actively contribute to our wellbeing.?

Homeowners don’t just want properties that serve as a ‘hub’ as they work towards healthier and more fulfilled lifestyles: in many cases, they want their homes to actively contribute towards this goal. Everything from air purity to interior climates can contribute to this, but natural light is a source of wellbeing that many people struggle to make the most of.

It’s no surprise we’re seeing so much demand for innovative glazed installations, from skylights to glass walls and entire glazed extensions, with minimal framework. Alternative glass options such as low iron glass (which has a purer, clearer appearance than standard glass, and is used in our Solstice Glass products) are also likely to become more widely embraced by architects, as their clients delve deeper and become more informed in? how to maximise their wellness in their living spaces.

**

The world of architecture and design is developing rapidly, and it is vital that architects, designers and contractors reflect the evolving needs of humanity in their plans for the future - particularly in a post-pandemic world, where wellness architecture will be more important than ever.?

Will the buildings of the future help us to be more productive, happier and healthier? Time will tell. We have faith in the innovation of our industry, and one thing we can be absolutely confident in is that specialists will continue to pioneer designs and technology that have the power to make? the world a better place, and enrich our lives and our wellbeing.

As we move towards the future, glass - with natural light in mind - is going to be more vital to us all than ever before. Here at Cantifix, we’re glad to be making that vision a reality.