The Soil Association Headquarters

Central to the brief and to the MEP designs was staff wellbeing – articulated in a series of staff workshops and guided by our specialist Wellbeing consultants. For the Soil Association’s staff, a truly sustainable building was one that people like being in. 

Our Wellbeing Canvas is a tool for capturing a client's wellbeing brief and guiding the project's design towards high workspace effectiveness outcomes. Our Canvas captures how the client’s work culture supports the basic psychological needs (autonomy, mastery and relatedness to others), identifies how key functional needs could be met, and sets out the ways in which management practices and design can be combined to foster higher psychological needs in the workplace, such as personalisation, a sense of belonging, and supporting ‘flow’. At each design stage, emerging design decisions are measured against the Canvas to evaluate how successfully the design will perform against the stated wellbeing objectives.

For the Soil Association, we provided an early-stage collaborative service centred on our Wellbeing Canvas. Through the associated workshop we identified the positive attributes in the Association’s working culture that should be maintained, as well as the key areas where there was room for improvement. We translated these key points into a single page Wellbeing brief that was used to inform and monitor the design right through until construction. The outcome of our work is an office that responds more effectively to user needs, and (as evidenced by feedback) creates a pleasant and appreciated work environment.