by Brianna Crandall — June 15, 2016 — The International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) recently marked a new milestone in the development, growth and expansion of the WELL Certification program as the first project in the world achieves WELL Certification under v1 of the WELL Building Standard.
The project, located at TD Bank Group’s office in Toronto, has been awarded WELL Certification at the Gold level, which also makes it the first project in North America to achieve WELL Certification. This prestigious distinction was awarded through IWBI’s WELL Building Standard, which is the first building standard to focus on enhancing people’s health and well-being through the built environment.
“A growing body of research demonstrates the environments where we live and work have a direct impact on our well-being and it is becoming increasingly important to place people at the heart of design and construction, operations and development decisions,” said IWBI Founder Paul Scialla, proudly announcing the first certification.
Created through seven years of rigorous research and development working with leading physicians, scientists, and industry professionals, the WELL Building Standard is a performance-based certification system that combines best practices in design and construction with evidence-based medical and scientific research. TD’s renovation earned the distinction based on seven categories of building performance — air, water, light, nourishment, fitness, comfort and mind — and achieved a Gold level rating.
“People are our most important asset,” said Martha MacInnis, design director, Enterprise Real Estate, TD Bank Group. “We’re committed to being an extraordinary place to work, so it made perfect sense to look at our existing design standards and figure out a way to elevate them to the next level.”
TD renovated 25,000 square feet of corporate office space located at TD Centre in downtown Toronto, Canada. Marrying the company’s existing corporate design standards and WELL’s New and Existing Interiors typology, the space incorporates health and wellness features throughout. This renovation was part of a larger optimization project at TD that involved the renovation or refresh of 50 floors throughout the headquarters.
The announcement follows a formal commitment from June 2015 to bring WELL to market across Canada by Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI) and the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC). The GBCI-CaGBC agreement aims to bolster the adoption of WELL in Canada by aligning the business and administrative processes with the demands of the Canadian market.
To date, WELL has enrolled 154 building projects in 17 countries. Currently, an additional nine projects are registered to pursue WELL Certification in Canada including CBRE Vancouver; Oxford’s MNP Tower in Vancouver, BC; and Bay Park Centre in Toronto, ON.
