ABSTRACT
Health and well-being go deeper than physical health and include social interactions, culture, equity, and experience along with the ecosystems that support everything we do. This chapter explores some of the research on air quality, materials, natural elements, and social aspects like food deserts. It looks at the rating systems that are in place providing strategies and goals to improve the built environment. The quadruple bottom line of healthcare and the built environment organizes and highlights key core values that need to be addressed in a sustainable design project. Biophilic design principles can be introduced at multiple levels from pure aesthetic choices or views to help patients and family be distracted from stressful situations to the configuration of architectural form to continuously improve physiological, psychological, and emotional health. Biomimicry affects or is related to health and well-being because when systems, products, or buildings are designed to restore the ecosystem that supports all life, humans benefit.
