Healthy Spaces
The interconnectivity of design and wellbeing
STORY BY Meg Daly
David Agnello
A
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quiet revolution is underway in interior design and architecture. As more Americans embrace the concept of wellness—which looks at all aspects of wellbeing, from physical health to social and emotional health as well—so too are design professionals expanding ways wellbeing can be incorporated into our lived environments. Jackson Hole is home to one of the world’s experts in this field. Veronica Schreibeis Smith is the founder of Vera Iconica, an architecture firm specializing in wellness architecture. She is also the chair of the Wellness Architecture Initiative at the research and education nonprofit Global Wellness Institute. Schreibeis Smith says in this day and age we need our homes to be healing spaces. “We live frenetically paced lifestyles,” she says. “Our homes ground us and offer dimensions of healing we are not getting from other parts of our lives.” Wellness is a different metric than green building, Schreibeis Smith explains. A building can be LEED certified for using insulation materials that prevent heat loss. But those materials may be toxic, and there is no regulatory body keeping tabs
