Move beyond green building: a focus on healthy, comfortable, sustainable and aesthetical architecture

The principal goal of this article is to make clear the multiple pathways through which the built environment is having a potential effect on the occupants’ physical and psychological health, well-being and performance. Reviewing the previous research literature on built environment and public health, high-quality environment design is an investment as occupants are healthier, staff retention rates are higher, productivity is higher and sustainability ideals are more likely to be met. Regarding the healthy effect of built environment, a conceptual model of healthy building and a framework to research the association between built environment and health is presented and discussed. In spite of a little progress in this area by now, some genuine challenges still lie ahead: (1) the necessity of dealing with the possible health consequence of built environment; (2) the need to extend the concept and perception of green buildings towards healthy buildings and develop a framework for assessing health, well-being and productivity of various scenarios in buildings; (3) the construction and design processes needed to have a primary aim directed towards making buildings healthy for working and living in. Holistic cognition about the problem, new research method and information on scientific validation, comparative testing or data collection and analysis is needed in the subsequent research