Before SAP Labs designed its new digs in Palo Alto, company executives asked employees how to make it a welcoming place to work. After all, that’s where they spend most of their day.
The answer? Windows. Lots of windows letting in lots of light.
The German-based business software company complied – even going so far as to move executives away from windows to give more workers access to daylight.
As the country embraces “green” building design – be it in the workplace or at home – daylight has become a premium. Not only does it save energy – more sunlight means less bulb light – but research shows that workers with access to natural light are more productive.
“Your mind is pretty powerful. If you feel more connected naturally, you perform better,” said Alan Turner, principal of the Mountain View architectural firm Hawley, Peterson and Snyder, which designed the Hewlett Foundation’s Menlo Park headquarters, one of California’s first buildings to earn a gold rating from the U.S. Green Building Council.
Perhaps, but recent studies supporting the productivity claim are helping architects convince developers that such green features are good for business – everybody’s business. Not only can landlords charge more for the space, but companies can achieve better results from their employees.
Lisa Heschong, founder of Heschong Mahone Group in Sacramento, has spent years studying the connection between people and sunlight. In 2003, Heschong studied workers in a Sacramento Municipal Utility District call center to discover whether natural light plus a view made any difference.
Based on a 1999 analysis she performed with shoppers and schoolchildren, she already knew that natural light caused shoppers to buy more and students to perform better in school. But in the study requested by the California Energy Commission, she wanted to analyze worker productivity and whether it mattered if people had a view.
“We found really, really big effects,” said Heschong, who studied two call centers operating 12 hours a day with 100 employees. In each study, employees with views outside their windows answered and processed calls 7 percent faster than employees doing the same work without a view.
No one is exactly sure why people perform better with a view, but Heschong has a theory. It has to do with circadian rhythms, the 24-hour cycle in the physiological processes of living beings.
While the data was compelling, when it was released four years ago there was little if any construction under way in the U.S. commercial real estate market, and Silicon Valley was experiencing one of its worst downturns in history. Now that the construction pipeline is bulging with commercial projects, the research is beginning to resonate with companies planning new buildings, as well as the developers in charge of building them.
In fact, after years of watching developers’ eyes glaze over when he mentioned environmentally friendly design, David Hobstetter, principal at KMD Architects in San Francisco, has seen a change.
One developer who’s already on board is Jay Paul Co. of San Francisco, currently building Silicon Valley’s largest development in five years, the 1.8-million-square-foot Moffett Towers. Matt Lituchy, chief investment officer for Jay Paul, said bona fide research linking light with worker productivity helps make the case for designing buildings with more natural lighting.
The seven-building, eight-story Moffett Towers offer what Lituchy called a “curtain wall” of floor-to-ceiling windows, with floors that measure 38,000 square feet, allowing more light to reach the buildings’ interior. In comparison, much of the valley’s older building stock has floors that are two and three times as large, and not much if any light reaches inside. None of the Moffett Towers buildings has leased yet, but Lituchy said the interest is high.
To critics who say such construction costs too much, architects counter that green design is no longer more expensive than standard design because more suppliers have entered the marketplace, bringing down prices.
Companies have also discovered that offices designed to make workers more comfortable pay for themselves. Standard industry norms say that during a building’s 30-year life cycle, a company will spend 90 percent of the costs on salaries for its workers; 3 percent on energy for lighting, heating and cooling; 4 percent on operating the building; and 3 percent on constructing the building.
“If we can achieve a minor improvement in productivity – and good daylighting has demonstrated that you can get 7, 8 or 10 percent improvements in performance – you pay for the bricks and mortar,” said Hobstetter, whose firm is designing the San Francisco headquarters for the Public Utilities Commission, touted to be the greenest building in the country.
Roney said that bolstered with the research, he has little trouble convincing the bosses to give up the corner office with a view so more people can enjoy it. Especially in Silicon Valley, where companies lure workers with such features as chef-prepared meals, massages and dry cleaning service, it stands to reason that offices with views would not be a tough sell.
“All companies are realizing that their most important asset is their people,” Roney said.