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Anna Mary Cooper and Alex Clarke-Cornwell, University of Salford, UK
The link between the built environment and the impact on people’s health is well known, and the interest in this area is continuing to grow at pace (Jackson, Dannenberg, & Frumkin, 2013). In developed countries, we are seeing illness and disease related to lifestyle risk factors becoming the biggest risk to mortality and hospital admissions. Lopez (2012), in the book ‘The Built Environment and Public Health’ writes:
“The built environment provides the framework for how daily lives are conducted, influences health across life spans, and represents important pathways through which individuals come into contact with many health risks” (p. 4)
To start with we want to give you an example from the University of Salford (UK) of how buildings can impact our movement. For many, the workplace has a large impact on our physical activity and sedentary behaviour, through both building design and workplace culture (Finch, Wilson, & Dugdill, 2012). The images below show examples of two buildings on the University of Salford campus. The first is a new building (2011) where the stairs are clearly visible as you enter through the main doors, and the lift (elevator) is at the back of the building (by the red carpet). The second is an older building (1966) – our building – where the lifts are visible and the stairs are through the small door on the left hand side; the stairs are not in view of those travelling around the building.
Through these two images, you can see how design can impact our public health in terms of activity. In the first one, would you (if you didn’t need to) go looking for the lift? Then in the second one, would you know where to find the stairs, or would you use the lifts as they dominate the eye line?
Stair location is one example of something that influences our decisions to be active or sedentary in our everyday lives. There are an increasing number of examples of how places are trying to encourage people to change their behaviour and choose the stairs rather than the lift, including: the #pianostairs that became a functioning keyboard when walked on; displaying calories used per step; and motivational messages to keep you climbing.
What other ways can a building’s design and setting influence us to be more active at work?
With the development of technology, activity levels at work have declined over the last century; the introduction of desk dependent computer based jobs has seen an increase in the number of sedentary occupations. Over recent years leisure-time activity has remained relatively stable, whilst workplace activity has decreased, which in turn has led to an increase in time spent in sedentary behaviours (Bassett, Pucher, Buehler, Thompson, & Crouter, 2008). For those who are economically active, sedentary behaviour at work may represent the majority of their sedentary time; therefore, the workplace is an ideal setting to influence active behaviour and repla