Wellness by Design: Enhancing Mind Health, Well-being & Productivity through Built Environments
Tye Farrow is a distinguished architect, lecturer, senior partner at Farrow Partners Architects, and now the author of “Constructing Health: How the Built Environment Enhances Your Mind’s Health.”
From transactional to transformative space and the intersection of neuroscience and architecture, to rethinking affordable housing and why there’s no such thing as neutral space, you’re invited to join us as we dive into ‘Wellness by Design: Enhancing Mind Health, Well-being & Productivity through Built Environments’ with Tye Farrow.
In this episode we’ll learn about:
Pathogenic vs Salutogenic design & why it matters
The impact built environments have on human neuro-regeneration
How to design work environments that enhance wellbeing & productivity
Harnessing the power of generosity & abundance to create vital spaces
Learn more about Tye Farrow’s work at www.farrowpartners.ca
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Episode Transcription
0:00:02 Amanda Stassen: Welcome to purpose Power Brand, a podcast for leaders and brands transforming business into a force for good. I’m Amanda Stassen, business and brand strategist, entrepreneur and founder of BIZU Innovation Group. I’m speaking with leaders who are not only proving that purpose drives profit, but the future of our world depends on it. If you want to outperform your market, grow your customers, build your employee culture, or attract investors, you’re going to want to lean in, guys. Today I am super excited because we are going to be talking with Tye Farrow, architect, lecturer, senior partner, Farrow Partners Architects, and now author of Constructing Health how the built environment enhances your mind’s health. Tye, welcome to the Purpose Power brand podcast. I am thrilled to be chatting with you today.
0:00:51 Ty Farrow: Great to be with you. Looking forward to our discussion.
0:00:53 Amanda Stassen: Yeah, me too.
0:00:54 Amanda Stassen: Listen, you know, when we met at, you know, we were working on a client project, and it was in the real estate development space, and as soon as you started talking, I was like, I have to connect with this guy because there’s so much of what you said that really just, it just resonates with me deeply. I came into business through neuroscience and behavioral commerce, and so you started talking about built environments and the impact they have on the mind, and I was just like, yep, gotta talk to you. Gotta dive into this a little bit deeper. So thank you so much. Thank you so much for taking the time.
0:01:28 Tye Farrow: Looking forward to getting into it. I think the intersection of neuroscience in a lot of different aspects for us, getting to know it, but certainly, as it relates to architecture, it’s an emerging field, and I think being able to connect the dots between what we perceive and how it relates to performance.
0:01:49 Amanda Stassen: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So before we dive into the actual meat of the book, I want to ask you, what’s your personal purpose? What’s the purpose that drives what you do, what you’ve been working on for the number of years that you’ve been an architect?
0:02:06 Tye Farrow: There’s one thing, one concept that drives me, which is tied to this idea of salutogenesis, and it drives, I think, what I do personally and professionally, and, in fact, something that I’m laser focused on. And it’s a somewhat complicated word, pseudogenesis. Sort of hard to pronounce, albeit the foundations of it are very, very straightforward. And salutogenesis grows out of the latin word of solace, meaning health, and the greek word genesis, which is really origins or the beginning. And so really what it means is, what are the origins of health? Or in, you know, in my words, really what causes health. And it’s the opposite of a word I think we know quite well, which is this concept of pathogens or pathogenic. And we seem to have a lot of that in our society or in the way that we, we frame things. And pathogenesis, we know, comes from the two words, which is patho disease and, and back to Genesis again. And this idea of really stopping bad things from happening as opposed to encouraging great things or healthy things to happen. And for really the last 150 years or so, versus the 5000 years of human history before that, in the last 100 years, we’ve had a pathogenic view.
0:03:51 Ty Farrow: You know, we think of preventative health strategies, you know, as opposed to health accelerant strategies. And, you know, an example of it is really that, you know, there are 8000 known causes of causes or symptoms of disease, but there’s only 80 known causes or symptoms of health.
0:04:17 Amanda Stassen: Wow.
0:04:17 Tye Farrow: And clearly we find what we look for, and it’s sort of that analogy of being at a river’s edge and people are falling in and drowning. And so what do we do? We build a fence so people don’t fall in, as opposed to teaching people to swim. I think we have to change our lens around it. And so, I mean, for me, this idea of what causes health, and like the title of the book, constructing Health, is this idea that I think you can view people that are either health giving, you can view businesses and their purposes in the same way. But equally importantly, you know, beginning to look at design and looking at, through this lens of design, being an accelerant for health that can create the conditions of which we can flourish and thrive.
0:05:23 Tye Farrow: And so I think it’s, for me, really the foundational thing that we’re laser focused on.
0:05:31Amanda Stassen: Yeah, no, I love that.
0:05:32 Amanda Stassen: That’s so good. So, tye, we’ll dive into salutogenics in just a minute, but I want to actually ask you a little bit more about the title of the book. So you called the book Constructing Health, how the built environment enhances your mind’s health. I’m really curious, why did you call it that? You specifically honed on mind health instead of overall health, and even instead of mental health? Talk to me a little bit about why you specifically did that.
0:06:02 Tye Farrow: Mind health, in a lot of ways, is a Salutogenic view compared to mental health, which is more of a pathogenic view. What do I mean by that? Is that thankfully, we are a society now that begins to talk about mental health. And certainly the complexity of that, that we’re finding in our societies and specifically coming out of out of COVID but it’s really focused on the disease side of things. And mind health is really.
0:06:50 Tye Farrow: And it’s more of a deficit based view.
0:06:53 Amanda Stassen: That’s interesting.
0:06:54 Tye Farrow: And mind health we use very specifically because it’s an asset based view in the sense of it’s like your body that, you know, in the morning or at the end of the day, you exercise your body. And your body, if you exercise it, it becomes healthier and healthier and healthier. It doesn’t, you know, it’s a very intentional thing. And I think our mind is the same way. Is that what can we do to exercise it and enhance it?
0:07:29 Tye Farrow: And then specifically, how can we use the environment to be, again, an accelerant for mind health as an asset based view of things? And I think we had a lot of discussion with the publisher because mental health, I suppose, in some ways still has stigmas associated in some things, but when I’m trying to flip that around.
0:07:54 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.
0:07:55 Tye Farrow: And use it as, again, something that is more through a salutogenic view of encouraging good things to happen.
0:08:05 Amanda Stassen: Yeah, yeah.
0:08:07 Amanda Stassen: And I love that. I love the specificity of that. I love that it really challenges us. And I actually, you know, you sent me a PDF version of the book, so I can’t wait to get my hands on the actual, the coffee table size book. The pictures are just stunning, but there’s so many provocations that you’ve put in this book. I’m just going to offer up a couple of them that I think really build the thesis of this book to me.
0:08:30 Amanda Stassen: And here’s one. The idea of what if health were the basis for judging every public space and building? What if we stopped tolerating design that causes boredom, disease and depression? What if we could construct health? One of the central themes in this book to me is this idea of there’s no such thing as neutral space. I feel like this is such an important concept for everybody to understand. So why don’t you break that down? Why don’t you tell me what is the science behind why there’s no such thing as neutral space?
0:09:02 Tye Farrow: Well, you know, one of the stats that I found in doing the research on the book that I found really interesting is, you know, this stat that we spend more time indoors than most whales spend underwater.
0:09:20 Amanda Stassen: Wow.
0:09:21 Tye Farrow: How is that possible? But equally, if we, if we take that a little further, is that we think of whales or fish or whatever creatures under the sea, that the water around them is so important to them that it facilitates a lot of things that nourishes them. But we really don’t speak to think of our environments in a similar way on what, in fact, they do to us. What happens is our environments, in fact, change the biology, the physiology of our bodies and our brain, which is effectively, you know, the hardware and the mind is really the operating system.
0:10:08 Ty Farrow: But in the 1940s, a canadian scientist, guy called Douglas fir, he was a scientist, and he had lab mice, and he brought some of his mice home and put them in a cage with, you know, colorful toys and. And running wheels and all the rest of it. And what he discovered was that the mice that he brought home in this environment, compared to the ones that were in the lab cages, they had fewer behavioral problems.
0:10:44 Ty Farrow: They were physically healthier. They performed better on solving problems or tests than the ones that were in the cages. And then another lady diamond from the University of California, Berkeley, she took this a bit further, and she took mice, and she wanted to really study it more scientifically. And so she had mice in a regular cage, mice that were in this enriched environment, and then ones that were more in an impoverished environment.
0:11:22 Ty Farrow: Interesting, like lab mice. And what she discovered after 30 days, she took the mice and she dissected their brains, and she found the mice that were in enriched environments compared to the ones that were in the middle, is the synapses, which are the connections between the neurons in your brain, very, very important. After just 30 days, the synapses in the brain grew at a rate of 25% more than the one that were in the baseline, 25%.
0:11:54 Tye Farrow: The cortex that sort of wraps it. That’s very important for a number of things, you know, memory, learning. And it began to thicken. And so that’s just 30 days. And, of course, the mice that were in the impoverished environment, in fact, a variety of things happen, including the hippocampus, which is very important for spatial orientation and variety of other things. These things begin to wither, meaning that the space physically changes you. And there was a very famous case that went on after that.
0:12:33 Tye Farrow: A group called the Angola. Three that were in the United States in solitary confinement. One guy, Robert King, was in solitary confinement, which is remarkable, the awful side, was solitary confinement for just shy of 30 years. And he was in a windowless cell for all but 1 hour a day.
0:12:57 Amanda Stassen: Holy.
0:12:59 Tye Farrow: Exactly. And so it gets taken to the Supreme Court of the United States, effectively, to say, this is cruel and unusual punishment. And, in fact, they won because they show that the space, like the mice in the impoverished environments, they change the body as a result of it. And so what I think for me, this begins to show, is that we need to imagine a new path forward fundamentally, where place making is reimagined as a health generating system that, at its roots, is an accelerant for our physiological, our physical, and our biological well being. And, you know, at different times of history and society and places in time, we’ve had this bigger view of space and what it is as a health accelerant. And what’s an example of? Well, think of Central park in New York City. When we go to New York, what do we want to do? We want to go to the park. We want to walk around. We want to see the changing of the seasons, and there’s so much activity and things that are happening there.
0:14:18 Tye Farrow: And it was designed by Frederick Law Omsted. And a lot of us know Frederick Law Omsted is a very famous park designer in the late 1800’s. And we know him as, really the father of modern landscape architecture. But, in fact, he wasn’t a landscape architect. He was the founder of something that was called United States Sanitary Commission, which was the forerunner of the Red Cross.
0:14:53 Tye Farrow: He wasn’t a landscape architect. He wasn’t a designer. He was a public health pioneer.
0:15:00 Amanda Stassen: Wow.
0:15:00 Tye Farrow: He called these parks ‘sanitary institutions’. So if I go and pitch one of my buildings, do I hold it up and say, I’ve just created the greatest sanitary institution? Well, of course I don’t, but …
0:15:15 Amanda Stassen: Interesting.
0:15:16 Tye Farrow: What happens is that he was using design to cause ecological health, physical health, societal health, and, in fact, importantly, mind health. And so this idea, you know, am I an architect or am I a designer, or am, in fact, am I a public health worker or someone that uses design to transform a variety of things in our society, where we live, where we play, where we work, where we heal, which is really, you know, the beginning of this idea of connecting together.
0:15:57 Tye Farrow: We started with neuroscience and architecture.
0:15:59Amanda Stassen: Yeah. Yeah.
0:16:00 Amanda Stassen: It’s, you know, it’s. It’s fascinating because we think theres, there’s more and more understanding about the impact of nature.
0:16:08 Amanda Stassen: Right.
0:16:09 Amanda Stassen: And how going for a walk every day actually will help you, and getting out of your space will help you and the effects and the positive impact that nature and being in nature has on your body, on your mind, on your well being. But there isn’t a lot of conversation around the built space, the rooms that we live in, the buildings that we occupy. And so it makes me wonder. I can’t imagine that we would, as human beings, knowingly design places and buildings that are pathogenic.
0:16:43 Amanda Stassen: Like, I just can’t even wrap my head around that idea. And yet, based on what you’re saying, I have to assume that there are places that we live in, that we exist in every day that are pathogenic, that are actually diminishing our health. So we may not be locked in solitary confinement, like the example that you gave where there’s four walls and is windowless. But are there examples that you would give that you would say, actually, this type of a design is more pathogenic than you can imagine? And can you share some examples?
0:17:18 Tye Farrow: Well, I think that we can think of this. The city that we live in, specifically coming out of COVID that, you know, the condos that we build, you know, that are little shoeboxes with a window at the end of them.
0:17:35 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.
0:17:35 Tye Farrow: Like the polytechnic of Milan, the great university in Milan. Some of the guys there that have a relationship where they did a study through COVID of people living in 600 square foot apartments that had a balcony or didn’t have a balcony, and the ability to step out on the balcony and look around the world that’s there. And they found the ones that had the balcony, the mental health, in the sense of depression, the rates were significantly lower in the apartments at the balconies opposed?
0:18:16 Tye Farrow: The ones that don’t.
0:18:19 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.
0:18:20 Tye Farrow: So this. This whole idea of environmental enrichment, which is a field of study, is, you know, every spot that we were walking to, we have cognitive and precognitive reactions that then have physiological and psychological responses to our body and the environment’s role. Back to this idea of neuro regeneration. It occurs through all of our lives. And this idea of beginning to use the space to do something to us, in fact, thinking of it as a non invasive therapeutic treatment, meaning that that threshold or the space that you walk into, whatever it is, it has the ability to reduce your cortisol, which, as we know, relates to stress and anxiety.
0:19:20 Tye Farrow: It can reduce your blood pressure and your heart rate. It can enhance your immune system as well as memory, social interaction, learning. And, in fact, like we heard earlier with the little mice, is to strengthen your neural networks. And so this. This idea of using space to do things specifically as performance enhancing vitamins, really, you know, there’s. There’s. There’s a study that just looks at daylight classroom. We looked at 2000 classrooms, 20,000 students across the west coast of the United states.
0:20:04 Tye Farrow: And, in fact, that the rooms that have good quality of light as opposed to glare, the students perform 25% better on reading more, you know, English or languages.
0:20:16 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.
0:20:17 Tye Farrow: And 20% better on mathematics as a result. And that’s like 20,000 students as a survey. Wow. If I came to you in your business and I said, as a result of what I do, I can enhance the performance of your team by 20% to 25%, would that be a value? Even if I’m off by 5% or 10%, in fact, even 50%, it still has a significant impact on human performance.
0:20:50 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.
0:20:51 Tye Farrow: And so back to this idea. As space is a non invasive therapeutic treatment and as a system that has the ability to design as something that has the ability to transform us,
0:21:12 Amanda Stassen: Yeah, we know it, we feel it.
0:21:16 Amanda Stassen: Right.
0:21:16 Amanda Stassen: We go into spaces that are filled with clutter and, well, I do. When my office is cluttered, I have this visceral reaction to things, but when things are simplified, when I’m surrounded with white, when I have more creative. All those things. So we know it, but I don’t know that we’re necessarily doing anything about it.
0:21:39 Tye Farrow: And, you know, that’s really the purpose of the book.
0:21:43 Amanda Stassen: I mean.
0:21:46 Tye Farrow: I studied architecture at the University of Toronto and then worked for a bit. And I thought, I’m going to go back and do a master’s of architecture, and design. And I did that at Harvard, and I was looking at the scale of the city.
0:22:00 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.
0:22:00 Tye Farrow: And then as I was practicing the way I knew that space clearly has an impact on our ecological health. The rise of sustainability, which we embraced, we know it has an impact on our physical health, like the rise of. Of suburbs, the and car dominated things, that has a relationship to the rise of chronic diseases. But then I began to know in my gut that a lot of these places make you feel different and often feel well. And that’s where I discovered this sort of intersection of neuroscience and architecture. And that’s where I went back before the pandemic, while running the practice, and did a master of neuroscience applied to architecture and design at the University of Venice as a fly in student.
0:22:53 Tye Farrow: And we were taught by the world’s leading neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and they laid out the evidence, clearly about the relationship between perception and our mind and our body like a radar dish. I wasn’t taught that before, and we’re not taught that in school or in architecture. School aesthetics certainly wasn’t in this program. It’s the first, you know, of its. Of its kind in the world. And I’m the first canadian architect with this degree. But what it did is just begin to fill out the dots and give me the tools to be more intentional.
0:23:36 Amanda Stassen: Yes.
0:23:37 Tye Farrow: On again, using the design to enhance the strategic purpose of the clients that I work with, because it’s all about the people and just some context on that. When you build a building, just to simplify it, say you spent $1 on a building as an example. Well, the question is, what we’re always focused on is the operating cost, the heating and the cooling, and how’s the envelope designed? Because that’s going to be a cost to us over a long period of time.
0:24:12 Tye Farrow: So you spend $1 on the capital cost. How much do you spend on the operating costs? $5. That’s a lot of money compared to the $1. So you should be really focused on that. But if you take that further out, is a building isn’t about the operating system, it’s to hold people.
0:24:35 Amanda Stassen: Right.
0:24:36 Tye Farrow: And so what’s the cost of the people to the business, your business, compared to the $5 in the operating cost, which is a lot, and the $1 on the capital cost, is it $10, $50, is it $100? Is it $150? It’s $200. So we’re worried about the $5, which is very important. But if that one little dollar, if a portion of that has a significant impact on the $200, the people.
0:25:10 Amanda Stassen: Yes.
0:25:10 Tye Farrow: And if I go back to the 20% or the 25% improvement, is the focus on these issues significant to your business? Hugely, hugely significant. And so to begin to, to focus on that side of the equation, because it has massive, massive impact in a tangible way.
0:25:35 Amanda Stassen: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:25:37 Amanda Stassen: And it’s interesting how in business we have been so short sighted, and I think it goes right across the board short sighted in the factors that actually will improve the wellbeing and the performance and the potential of our employees all the way through to the performance, the well being of our customers, to the performance, the well being of the planet, all those things. So there’s a short sightedness to it. And I think there’s a concept in the book where you introduce this idea of generosity, and I was fascinated by that because you don’t hear that in business. You really don’t. You don’t hear that in architecture.
0:26:18 Amanda Stassen: It’s an interesting concept, and you contrast this idea of transactional and transformative. Talk to me a little bit more about that.
0:26:27 Tye Farrow: Well, in a lot of things that we do, it’s sort of this pathogenic mindset that we’re in and sort of an austerity as opposed to an abundance area. And so if we take it back to buildings, you know what? And it’s. I mean, it’s again, a concept that’s really only been around for about 120 years is what are buildings? What should they be? They need to be functional, right? That’s. It has to be functional. Well, of course the building has to be functional, but the analogy for me is like a hamburger.
0:27:13 Tye Farrow: So you get a hamburger, it’s got, you know, a bun, a little piece of meat in the middle, maybe a. Of little mustard or a pickle to give it some crunch or color. But a hamburger is very, very functional. I mean, it’s functional. What do I mean by that? Well, you don’t need a plate. You don’t need a knife and a fork to eat it. It’s functional. You just have to pick it up.
0:27:35 Amanda Stassen: Right.
0:27:36 Tye Farrow: It does its function. It provides you with protein and some calories and nutrition. It’s doing its job exactly on what it’s doing. But it’s transactional. It doesn’t do anything more than that. And in fact, arguably, it leaves you feeling empty after an hour and more. So what it does is the damage it does and causes because of the sodium content of the additives and all the rest of them. And that’s what a lot of our buildings are, is they’re transactional. They don’t do anything any more than they’re asked for.
0:28:18 Tye Farrow: And the opposite of that is you think of a smoothie or you think of a blueberry that is packed full of minerals and vitamins and other pieces. And so this idea of moving to an abundance mindset and fundamentally the basis of architecture for me is tied into three things. One is around generosity, which you mentioned, and generosity, which we don’t talk a lot about in business or design. In fact, we should.
0:28:53 Tye Farrow: And the thing that’s tied closely to generosity is the concept of affordances. And again, we focus on the function and the program of what a building should be, but less so on the effect and the design solutions and what a building does and the type of relationship it will form with us. And its ability to communicate these messages of affordance and generosity and the potential of it is very important.
0:29:34 Ty Farrow: A simple idea. What’s an affordance? An affordance is, you know, when you walk up to, you know, a set of doors.
0:29:43 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.
0:29:44 Tye Farrow: And with the door handle, you don’t know if you’re supposed to push it or pull it.
0:29:49 Amanda Stassen: Yes.
0:29:51 Tye Farrow: And we see. So that’s not generous because it doesn’t tell you. And we know other doors. You know, there’s, there’s the famous, you know, handles and in the Gaudi, in Barcelona, and it’s an apartment, you know, that he casted around, you know, wax around his hand and it fits firmly. Well, that’s something that’s generous because it’s telling you and helping you do something. Now, generosity, we often think of the idea that if you’re a developer of a condo, does that mean you have to give more?
0:30:30 Tye Farrow: Like more amenities, for example? But it’s not about doing more. I mean, what’s a generous example? One might be if you’re walking down a street, is there a bench to sit on? Is there a tree to provide some shade? Is there a little canopy that keeps you out of the rain? Or is it a narrow sidewalk with cars racing back. So that’s one concept of generosity. Another idea is allowing you to do more things with it and more potential.
0:31:14 Tye Farrow: But the other thing is also, I suppose it’s around that is for the same amount of money, allowing more things to occur. And there’s another concept which is, you know, within a building or maybe condominium or something, is allowing people to do more with what they have and the flexibility. I mean, often they say, well, architects, they want everything to be perfect and you can’t change it. But the idea of giving, the generosity, of allowing you to rearrange, maybe that’s in your office space instead of the desk and everything, you know, the same. Can you work standing up? Can you
0:32:01 Tye Farrow: You know, our bodies are all different. And does it give the flexibility of size? But the third, I think, really important concept around generosity is the idea of a generous process which is allowing a process that’s a saluto systemic, that’s a health causing process that allows more voices to be at the table. So when we determine something, are we seeing it through your perspective? From my perspective, somebody else’s?
0:32:42 Tye Farrow: And what I mean by that is we all see things differently. It’s in fact, how our mind works, and it’s how perception works. Which is, for example, if we see, say, a georgian building with a pediment in columns coming down, well, in maybe a western based view, we think of stability, maybe good government, maybe that’s a parliament building or city hall or something like that. Well, that’s our view. But if I take that same architectural vocabulary, and what happens if I put it in the deep south, in the United States, or if I put it in South Africa, which we were doing work, in fact, what that communicates is not generosity or stability or other. It is oppression.
0:33:41 Tye Farrow: And so the idea of being very intentional about bringing more voices around the table to begin to understand what the. What the building communicates and this concept of environmental enrichment and the idea of the elements of enriched environments, in fact, we need to see them more as spices that we add to food.
0:34:10 Amanda Stassen: Interesting.
0:34:12 Tye Farrow: That’s an example of it. If you think of cinnamon. Cinnamon in a northern, western based culture is we think of Christmas in a spice wine. Maybe we put it in spice juice. But if you’re in India, it might associate it with an indian biryani. The cinnamon in both examples, on both tongues, still has a similar flavor, which is maybe a little earthy, maybe a little sweet, but it has different cultural overlays.
0:34:45 Amanda Stassen: Right.
0:34:46 Tye Farrow: So back to the idea of generosity, is generosity might be very different in different conditions, meaning that I might want protection from snow and rain here, and I want the sun to come in in a northern climate, albeit if I am in the middle of Africa, in fact, it’s that tree that’s very generous to provide a place for shade. But if we come to projects and we begin to try and focus on these elements, generosity, variety and vitality, authenticity, things that are more natural, and then through to the other extreme, which is really those spaces that are intimate and still and solid, very important pieces of the puzzle that we need to use to reimagine our architecture.
0:35:57Amanda Stassen: Yeah, yeah.
0:35:58 Amanda Stassen: You know, as you’re talking about generosity, one of the areas that I think lacks generosity is the way that affordable housing has been developed, even affordable housing in the suburbs. You know, we in Canada, we’re going through affordable housing kind of crisis here. And the idea, it’s like as soon as developers think about that space, it starts to get smaller. It starts to, how many can you pack in there?
0:36:31 Amanda Stassen: It’s almost contra to everything that you’re talking about. And so it causes the pathogenicness, if I can use that phrasing, to persist. Are we making people unwell and unhealthy by forcing them to live in environments that are smaller, tighter, no windows, all those kind of things. If you were on a project that was all about designing salutogenic approach or constructing health in an affordable housing, suburban environment
0:37:07 Amanda Stassen: what would be some things that you would do?
0:37:11 Tye Farrow: Well, I think your assessment is very true that there is a focus on affordable housing right now, which is about the process of building modular and rapid, which is very important. I mean, the more, you know, the more fabrication of buildings of any building type that you can do in a. Effectively in the factory and then bring it to site and assemble it, the better off it is. We use a lot of timber, mass timber, that we hear a lot about.
0:37:53 Tye Farrow: And it’s very important because if you put it under the lens of health again, and not just ecological health, timber is fantastic for ecological health. And that’s what we hear a lot about, because it stores carbon when it’s cut down. But using wood also from an economic standpoint, I mean, it’s helping communities in the north of our country, right, economically. But also, we know the use of wood is also very important from a mind health standpoint.
0:38:29 Tye Farrow: It reduces our blood pressure, social interaction, back to the idea of stress. In fact, the scent of it also makes you more relaxed, in fact, you want to linger in. But what worries me is that, yeah, in fact, a few that have been built in Toronto recently, they look like 1950s motels. And home is all about dignity. And there’s a difference between a house and there’s a difference between a home and a house is tied back to more Rene Descartes and sort of a rationalist view.
0:39:14 Tye Farrow: And this cartesian measuring that, how many square feet do we have for our living room? Square feet for this and the rest of it? Well, that’s a house. But a home is something that is where we have memories and we build relationships. This idea of being able to create places, I mean, we know our cities that we live in, they’re thrilling and busy and often noisy. That grounds out a lot of the quieter things, birds and breathing.
0:39:57 Tye Farrow: But this idea of the focus of home as being really this counterbalance and places where we see refuge and that we want to go in and we want to linger and stay awhile, and we feel drawn in and at peace in these spots. And just the qualities of light and shadow and how the light falls on surfaces. And then that ability to be able to shape these spots to how we live and reflect our own character. There is an architect who won the Pritzer prize, and the Pritzer prize is often called the Nobel Prize in architecture.
0:40:51 Tye Farrow: It’s very, very prestigious. And this chilean architect, he was building a lot of affordable housing, if his name escapes me. But he built this thing called a half house. Really amazing. And what it was, was two sets of walls with sort of a pitched roof that went over it. And these were repeated side by side by side. But what he did was he only built in half of that sort of pitched roof, and the other was empty, had the roof over it and the party wall to the next.
0:41:25 Tye Farrow: But the idea was that you would buy this house and in it it would have, you know, you come into a living room, maybe a kitchen, and then, you know, one bedroom maybe a study, and that the study then be converted to a second bedroom. And then when you had a little more money and you’re getting more kids, you could expand up the living room into the other half house, and then you could add another bedroom and then maybe another bedroom and a bathroom over time.
0:41:54 Tye Farrow: But it was generous in allowing people to evolve with their life. And over time. We’re involved in something that’s called the tree house, which is really reimagining affordable living for seniors. And what it does is it takes the common areas instead of on the ground level. It moves it up into the middle of the building so that you have more prospect and you can see out. But the idea then of walking up and down, coming up and down, too, this is a sort of mandatory basis.
0:42:34 Tye Farrow: But the idea then also is the ground floor as two story apartments for families with young kids that can have a backyard space. Then the parents are off to work. The intergenerational or multigenerational in the sense that then the older people then have the ability to, you know, wait for the kids to come home. They come into the central area that have shared kitchen and sitting area. The size of the units are a variety of sizes. So that maybe you go in, you know, with, you have two bedrooms, one stage, and then maybe, you know, your mate passes away and then you say, well, I can move into just a one bedroom, but I still have the commonplace. And you can spend your whole, a lot, a good portion of your life in that, as opposed to being transactional, that you’re going in, it’s affordable, you’re only there
0:43:34 Tye Farrow: But how do you create something that, in fact, becomes a place that you want to be and it doesn’t look like or communicate that it’s affordable housing.
0:43:45 Amanda Stassen: yes.
0:43:48 Tye Farrow: and you’re different than me, and that’s all about dignity and respect. The idea of generosity. And so the key pieces of the puzzle, I think, for architecture that certainly drives us is this idea of generosity. What does the building afford to you? What does it communicate? What does it allow you to do? And dignity. And all of those things are tied together because there’s lots of discussions about, well, is there stairs or is there rat?
0:44:26 Tye Farrow: If my abilities are different than yours, I mean, I’ve got issues. Cause I’ve got these things on. So is that a disability or is it just my abilities are different? And what can I do as a designer to offer dignity to you like affordable housing? Again, that if we view being generous in all that we do, then what it does is it creates the abilities for all of these things, again, to be an accelerant for humanity, performance, and to create the conditions of which we can thrive and possible.
0:45:10 Amanda Stassen: I love it.
0:45:10 Tye Farrow: By doing it, it then is an accelerant for our whole communities and our societies.
0:45:16 Amanda Stassen: Yes. Yes.
0:45:18 Tye Farrow: And so it has to be, I believe, the purpose that drives everything we do. And certainly in this practice and for myself, it is this thing that we’re laser focused on.
0:45:33 Amanda Stassen: So, good. Now, is the treehouse project, is that live? Is that actually something that you’re working on or is it launched or.
0:45:40 Tye Farrow: We are. We’ve developed it. We’ve launched it. We partnered with a company called Element five, which is a master producer in Canada, based in St. Thomas, Ontario.
0:45:54 Amanda Stassen: Wow.
0:45:55 Tye Farrow: And so it is using, effectively modular construction, but the reaction to date is everybody would like to live in it because that central area is two stories in height and it still has to be affordable, cost effective, but we don’t have to turn to a deficit or an austerity based view is how do you flip it around and create that same space as how they make you feel, how they make you feel better?
0:46:40 Amanda Stassen: Yeah, I know.
0:46:42 Amanda Stassen: I’ll have to check it out for sure. As we’re talking, one of my biggest takeaways from our conversation is the word that keeps coming to my mind is intentionality. And it’s this idea that, you know, I’m being reminded that in business and in life, we need to be intentional about our actions. And because if we aren’t intentional, the default is that it’s going to the. The actions may not have a good outcome if we’re not intentionally looking to have a positive, a net positive outcome, a salutogenic outcome, an outcome that’s going to benefit people.
0:47:23 Amanda Stassen: There is no neutral. It’s going to have the opposite effect. And I love that because it puts the onus and the responsibility on us as humans and on businesses, you need to keep the outcome in mind and not only that, have an outcome that is positive and lead with that. Right? Yeah.
0:47:42 Tye Farrow: And there doesn’t seem to be a lot of people, at least in the design profession, that are really talking about this.
0:47:49 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.
0:47:50 Tye Farrow: And we have been driving, driving, driving specifically in this area. It doesn’t benefit our business. You know, if you just look at it from a straight business standpoint, I mean, we got a call from the leader of an extraordinary organization in Dublin, in Ireland, and, you know, we’re doing a dozen buildings there. We got a call from a CEO that heard about our purpose in Israel, Jerusalem, we’re doing a campus. It’s about a million square feet there.
0:48:26 Amanda Stassen: Wow.
0:48:28 Tye Farrow: These people are coming to us because they believe that, in fact, space isn’t neutral and they can use it as an accelerant for their business.
0:48:39 Amanda Stassen: So, good. Yeah.
0:48:40 Tye Farrow: Create value. And you, I think we need to value and values with an s on it that they’re both tightly intertwined. Yeah. And I mean, as an emphasis on that, you know, we don’t have any money in our budgets, you know, for building our buildings and anybody else does, but it’s the intentionality and it’s like your shopping list.
0:49:08 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.
0:49:08 Tye Farrow: There might be a lot of things that you like to get on your list, but you can’t afford to do.
0:49:14 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.
0:49:14 Tye Farrow: That’s like any building.
0:49:16 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.
0:49:16 Tye Farrow: But what’s really, really important to you, what has impact you? Started building. Now, we start with a generous process, which a lot of people were table. We start off and we say, why are we doing this building?
0:49:30 Amanda Stassen: Yes.
0:49:31 Tye Farrow: And some might say, well, that’s kind of. But dumb question. Because we need so many offices, or we need to accommodate this or that, or are all the rest, we say, okay, Chad, gotta be functional. It’s gotta hold, these programs. What else? Well, it’s gotta be on budget. Yes. Okay. It’s gotta be on schedule. Okay, what else? Like, what drives you? What drives your business? Well, it might be, say it’s an education facility. It’s about, you know, known and loved and collaboration and. And meaningfulness and all the rest said, okay, well, that’s a piece. What else?
0:50:08 Tye Farrow: What are the values? Because that idea is when you walk on the. Through the threshold of the door, it communicates messages to you. They may be conscious, they may be subconscious, they might be preconscious, but they tell you of the experience. And as you mentioned earlier, that if you want to linger and stay and have a conversation, or they do the opposite, that you want to run for your life.
0:50:42 Amanda Stassen: Totally.
0:50:43 Tye Farrow: I was visiting an education facility not that long ago, and all of these words are being thrown around, and it’s, you know, it was the exact opposite of it. And you sort of tightened up.
0:51:05 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.
0:51:06 Tye Farrow: And it’s the same in places. We were trying to get people back to the offices. Yes, exactly. It was during a high tech company in Europe that remains nameless. But back to the idea of authenticity. I mean, it’s not authentic and you notice it and you realize it, and it’s transactional, and we’re trying to get people back. But why do you want to go there as opposed to staying at home, besides the commuting and the other stuff in the sense of exactly making you feel better.
0:51:45 Amanda Stassen: Bang on, And I think you’re 100% accurate. We talk about brand values a lot and organizational values. And so rather than just be words that are expressed on a piece of paper on a wall somewhere in your office and let them come alive in the space, in your actions.
0:52:04 Amanda Stassen: Right.
0:52:04 Amanda Stassen: And there’s ways to do it. And that’s what you’re saying. You’re saying it can be done. You can design authenticity and you can design transparency. My favorite is transparency. I have, I have to say, where a company says that they’re transparent, meanwhile, you walk in the, in the space and all the doors are closed, there are no windows, there’s nothing transparent. I mean, it’s ironic, right? But it actually works against what you’re trying to build.
0:52:29 Tye Farrow: Well, yeah, and, you know, transparent and collaborative. And all doors are closed. corridor. But we have a coffee station where everybody can come together. And it’s like, I mean, it’s like you go to a restaurant and you walk into the restaurant and you smell something, and then maybe you see some flowers and some food and it has a long view. And you know, before you’re sitting down, you already know you have made up your mind that you’re going to have an extraordinary meal.
0:53:08 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.
0:53:09 Tye Farrow: If you walk in like your example, and you see a creature running across it and it’s dark and dirty and all the rest of the. You say, I gotta get the hell out of here because I’m gonna be poisoning. The same as the office spaces in your example of the doors that it radiates a, you know, a perfume as it was.
0:53:31 Amanda Stassen: 100%.
0:53:32 Tye Farrow: Yeah. And you know, if this group, well, if they’re authentic compared to what they say, but space speaks more than words.
0:53:45 Amanda Stassen: That’s so true. That’s so true.
0:53:47 Tye Farrow: Together are so important.
0:53:50 Amanda Stassen: This has been such an enriching conversation, I got to tell you. I’m confident this is going to be a university level course called constructing health. It’s just awesome.
0:54:02 Amanda Stassen: Awesome.
0:54:02 Amanda Stassen: But before you go, before I let you go, I’d love for you to share with our listeners, our watchers, two purpose powered tips that business leaders, entrepreneurs, CEO’s can apply today that will actually construct health in their business or even in their work environments, even in our home work environments. What two tips would you share?
0:54:27 Tye Farrow: Well, I think it’s like putting on glasses that have special powers and in those lenses, you will be able to see what you do in a different way and seeing in a different way is the concept of salutogenesis. Do you have a salutogenic, a health causing perspective, that you’re doing things that are accelerants, not just for the bottom line, but you’re doing it because of a purpose, and a purpose to be an accelerant to cause health, and using health as a way to judge everything you’re doing.
0:55:15 Tye Farrow: Do we have a healthy relationship? Do you have healthy HR policies? Do you have healthy communications and related relationships? Or are you just focused on stopping bad things from happening? I mean, you have to stop the risk side of things. But also, if you take that as one view, is sort of an asset based view as opposed to a deficit based view, and then the second one is coming back to the idea of generosity affordances.
0:55:52 Tye Farrow: Again, it’s not about having to add more or space, like the party rooms or a bigger party room in a condo. But if you focus everything on being generous between me to you, you to your customers, what can you do to help people do more of what they do? Afford them to do more of what they do. And by doing that, then the purpose changes into that value equation is that you’re sought out because in your generosity, you’re solving somebody else’s problems.
0:56:32 Tye Farrow: And if you can do that, then people want to spend time with you.
0:56:38 Amanda Stassen: I love that.
0:56:39 Amanda Stassen: And then, you know what? It’s so true. It’s critically important when we’re asking people, even in the work environment in corporate Canada or corporate America or any organization, you want people to come back into the office. How are you making it a place? How can you make the space work in such a way that benefits them? And it’s not just adding a gym membership or, you know, those things, because, yes, to your point, you don’t need to add more, but you can actually thoughtfully think about how the space is generously contributing to their well being is actually adding positive value to their life.
0:57:20 Tye Farrow: Yeah. And it’s back to that saluto-systemic process in the sense that we assume that by doing something that, well, that would be more generous to you, because I think it is. But the question is, are we asking you and everybody else true? What could I do? What’s the range of things? We don’t have all the money in the world, but what can we do that would have great value to you? The value isn’t necessarily dollars, but it’s back. The idea of affords it offers, it makes it clearer and easier to do what you do.
0:58:06 Tye Farrow: I think they’re very fun lenses, and I think it’s it’s just shifting away. We’re so much in sort of, you know, an austerity mindset because of the economy and a variety of other things. But it’s, if it is about abundance, and we must focus on abundance, and it’s again, it’s not a dollar thing, it’s a mindset.
0:58:35 Amanda Stassen: Nice, nice, nice.
0:58:37 Amanda Stassen: So tell me, how can people connect with you? How can they get the book constructing health?
0:58:44 Tye Farrow: The book you can get through University of Toronto press. You can also get it through Amazon. It’s just in the pre purchase stage. But link on to those two sites. Certainly going to our website, farrowpartners.ca. We’ve got a lot of, it’s very information rich website. Again, generosity and sharing LinkedIn. We try and post a lot of information around these issues, again, to give people the tools and send you on Instagram, as in LinkedIn, there’s lots of information there. The reason we’re sharing this stuff is once you see something, you can’t unsee it.
0:59:33 Tye Farrow: The purpose of the book is to help open our eyes a little wider to things we inherently know within our stomach, as well as to give us the tools to be able to better understand it.
0:59:48 Amanda Stassen: That’s awesome. Thank you so much, Tye, for sharing your insights, your passion for writing the book. Obviously, constructing health. I think it’s going to be brilliant and I think it actually has really far reaching potential beyond design. I think it’s a way of thinking that I think the world is ready for. I think we all are looking for. Everyone is looking for those performance hacks, and this is one that I think we just haven’t quite wrapped our minds around.
1:00:16 Amanda Stassen: Um, but I think, I think it’s going to be so helpful and will have such a great impact. And listen, thank you for living your purpose. And just in case you haven’t heard it today, I just want to say to you that the world is better because of you being in it, because of the work that you’re doing. And I just want to say thank you again.
1:00:35 Tye Farrow: You’re very kind, and it’s, as always, it’s pleasure to spend some time together and share some ideas together.
1:00:43 Amanda Stassen: Awesome. Hey, thanks for listening to the purpose power brand podcast. I’m Amanda Stassen. If you liked what you heard, be sure to share and subscribe on your favorite podcast player. We’d also love to hear what resonated with you. Or if you have a guest suggestion, drop us a line at info@bizu.co. Special thanks to Mark Salam for original music and lead podcasting for production. Lastly, if you’re ready to purpose power your brand to grow, win, and impact at scale, let’s talk.
1:01:12 Amanda Stassen: Visit www.bizu.co. That’s www.bizu.co. Bye for now.
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