Designing with care: Hospice design since 1980

Wellbeing has emerged as an influential agenda in the built environment in recent years, promoting the social and, significantly, the economic aspects of triple bottom line sustainability, a three-part framework encompassing environmental, social and economic priorities. With a proven business case, it embodies an accessible and affirmative goal for occupants and practitioners alike, compared to the technical discourse of restraint that surrounds energy efficiency. As the property market increasingly demands user-centred environments, evidence based design proven to deliver wellbeing outcomes for end users is essential. The challenge of capturing and communicating this evidence to a range of expert and non-expert audiences is therefore a topical professional concern. This paper presents a novel wellbeing valuation approach. Consisting of a validated multi-item scale to measure the wellbeing of building users and its monetisation using techniques from the social impact sector, it has the capability to communicate the value of design in a powerful and transformative manner. Wellbeing valuation is a nascent practice that provides the professions with opportunities to collaborate with end users and develop new knowledge about building performance and experience, enhancing the ability of practitioners to shape the built environment in positive ways.