Cultivating healthier workspace at Dockside Canada Water

Dockside Canada Water aspires to be the healthiest workspace campus in London, delivering 1.5M square feet of Grade-A office space with unbeatable connectivity and a promise to enrich the lives of those who work while conserving local ecology and mitigating the development’s impact on the planet. The internationally recognised team of environmental design consultants and engineers at Atelier Ten has been working in partnership with Art-Invest Real Estate to ensure that the masterplan and its breadth of individual buildings and public space adhere to the world’s leading standards for health, wellbeing and sustainability — but what does that mean in real terms?

We sat down with Atelier Ten director Younha Rhee, who has been a key voice in the evolution of Dockside since 2020, to break down the key goals and strategies that will ensure the advanced wellbeing and sustainability credentials of this new business hub. She explains, “Creating the ‘healthiest campus’ is an important goal that guides everything we do. It is the primary factor in every decision we make, but it’s something that you cannot necessarily translate into a numeric target — it’s an experience. That’s why we use third party certification schemes such as WELL to quantify and monitor our strategies.”

Currently being implemented across 4.7 billion square feet of real estate around the world, in 124 countries, the WELL Building Standard, is a roadmap for creating and certifying spaces that advance human health and wellbeing. The WELL Standard is a library of more than 500 evidence-based, design, policy and operational strategies, allowing developers and consultants to improve air quality, boost cognitive function, encourage daily movement, foster a culture of health and advance diversity, equity and inclusion. Research shared by WELL demonstrates that when developers commit to these types of health strategies they can expect to see a 28% increase in workplace satisfaction, 10% increase in overall perceived mental health and an 8% increase in employee performance due to improved air quality. Rhee continues, “All of the individual Dockside buildings are targeting WELL building platinum, which is the highest level, and for the masterplan we are committed to certifying in the WELL community at a gold level.”

By building to the highest standards of the global development industry’s most comprehensive and future-facing certification schemes, Art-Invest Real Estate and Atelier Ten — in partnership with the wider master-planning team of Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), HWKN, Townshend Landscape Architects and Andy Sturgeon — are futureproofing the sustainability and ESG credentials of Dockside, but how are these strategies implemented? Rhee and her team’s work can be seen throughout the masterplan for Dockside, manifested as pragmatic catalysts for improved wellbeing, such as health-conscious food and beverage outlets, on-site access to functional healthcare, as well as thoughtful programming and landscaping to create inviting, usable public spaces. Opportunities for increased physical activity will be prioritised throughout the development. At One Dockside, Atelier Ten and Bjarke Ingels Group’s reimagined vision for bicycle storage sees it made more accessible and visible on the ground floor, a move that centres the cycle commute as an essential and normalised part of the work day, inspiring workers to adopt healthier transport habits that will enhance their overall wellbeing.

Within Dockside’s individual buildings, Atelier Ten is implementing strategies that act in response to London’s climate — an approach Rhee states is the starting point for all of their projects, anywhere in the world — as well as the unique usage of these workspace destinations. “We design buildings that optimise their performance in response to the climate. In London it’s mainly a heating dominated climate. However, office buildings typically require a lot more cooling because of all the internal loads, such as computers and all the occupants in the building generating heat. You need a slightly different strategy for the core area, where it’s mainly cooling, with clear zoning of the perimeter and the floor.”

According to a report from Carter Jonas, only 8.3% of UK office space will meet new environmental standards set to be enforced from 2030. Dockside will not only meet these standards, but is targeting to vastly exceed them. Rhee states, “There are certain levels, such as operational carbon use, that we need to hit, but we want to go above and beyond the planning requirements, differentiating this master plan from others.” She adds that one of the main learnings Atelier Ten has gleaned from its rich portfolio of projects is the importance of creating a robust implementation plan, that aims to overachieve on sustainability targets. By reaching higher than appears necessary, they allow their projects to maintain industry-leading standards as the markers of success continually move in this rapidly evolving and innovation-led field.

Explore workspace at Dockside Canada Water here.