6 minute read
Designing for Healthy Living: Cedra Ginsburg Goldman '93
Until COVID-19 lockdowns forced us all indoors for months on end, few of us realized how much the buildings we occupy affect our health. We weren’t necessarily spending more time indoors. Between work and home life, we spend more than 90 percent of our time surrounded by four walls even in normal circumstances. But when we were told to hunker down and our health was at the center of the narrative, we became much more aware of the importance of fresh air and daylight filling our confined spaces.
Buildings have long been designed to protect occupants from harm and illness. But what if they were also designed to actively promote people’s health and well-being? That’s where architect Cedra Ginsburg Goldman ’93 is taking the next phase of her career. Four years ago, after nearly 20 years in the industry, Cedra returned to school to earn degrees in public health. She now has a master’s degree from the Colorado School of Public Health and is pursuing a doctorate.
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Cedra’s path has taken her from traditional architecture to sustainability consulting, and now to focusing on how the design and operation of buildings impact the health and wellness of the people inside. Her goal is to help advance a relatively new field by bringing architects and public health officials into the same conversation. “Architects and public health professionals work in separate silos, and they don’t understand how important combining their goals is to the health of the people occupying these buildings,” she says.
The lockdown has created an opening. “We’re much more aware, especially of the air that we are living in, than we ever have been before,” Cedra says. “... As awful, awful as the pandemic has been, I think it has created a willingness to consider things that are not the status quo, because nothing is the status quo anymore.”
The pandemic also gave her a ready-made opportunity to study how building design, operation, and occupant health align. For her doctorate, Cedra developed a survey of Colorado nursing homes that aimed to identify ways in which the buildings affected staff and residents’ mental and physical health, especially as residents were isolated to help stop the spread of the virus. She hopes the results can help drive improvements of the facilities in case of a similar outbreak, such as by creating “pods” or “neighborhoods” that would allow residents to continue socializing during a time of quarantine. She also hopes the work will translate to other facilities housing vulnerable populations, such as homeless shelters or prisons.
Some lessons already learned show how even small actions can make a big difference. “What we’re seeing at these nursing homes is that the introduction of outside air into the buildings is good for cognitive function and good for infection control,” Cedra says. That could involve installing a new ventilation system or simply opening some windows. Letting in daylight is another factor that has been shown to improve cognitive function. Cedra adds: “You really need to keep that in mind with places where people reside. You have to have not just a small window that meets code but something that really supports the mental and physical health of the occupants.”
Cedra describes those actions as low-hanging fruit. To get an idea of the adjustment in thinking that would need to happen for building improvements that are more involved, consider how many times you’ve intended to take the stairs in a multistory building but took the elevator instead because you couldn’t find the stairs. As Cedra puts it, “We have designed built environments to discourage active living.” In addition to relocating stairs, design considerations could include making break rooms more inviting to encourage workers to step away from their desks for lunch and be more mindful in their eating, or installing smart lighting that adjusts its color temperature to mimic natural light. “If we just shift how we design a little bit and shift how we occupy these spaces, we really can create some significant changes going forward,” she adds.
Cedra got into architecture because a family member suggested it. She solidified her love of art at Santa Catalina, but she was also good at math, and the family member pointed out that she would be the first architect in the family. As she warmed up to the idea, she settled on Rice University, where she was accepted into an architecture program of just 25 students. “There is no way I would have gotten into Rice had I not had the art portfolio from Catalina,” she says.
In her first job at an architecture office, however, Cedra knew that she wanted more of a “big picture” role. So she got licensed, allowing her to do project management and opening up more career opportunities. Getting a license also afforded her a certain amount of respect, especially when overseeing construction. “If you have a license, suddenly your commitment to the profession is demonstrated,” Cedra says. Looking back, she believes that attending an all-girls school gave her the confidence to stand up for herself in a male-dominated industry. Catalina “really fostered our independence and our value as people,” she says.
Cedra’s career continued to evolve. She joined an engineering company that brought her to Colorado, where she was involved in the construction of a new wing of the Denver Health hospital. Several years later, looking for something different, she joined a consulting firm, where she served as director of sustainability services.
Then, ten years ago, while pregnant with her second child, she decided to strike out on her own, forming the Manya Group. Through the company, she performed property condition assessments for the Department of Housing and Urban Development with an eye toward sustainability improvements. She also performed LEED certifications, which assess a building’s positive impact on the environment. “We did a LEED certification for the Red Cross headquarters here in Denver, as well as Pinnacol Assurance, which is the major workers’ comp insurance company for Colorado. And, having done both of those, I realized that is not really the direction that I’m passionate about,” she says. A small portion of those certifications was devoted to occupant health, and Cedra wanted to do more. “That was when I realized that I needed to pivot to do something that fulfilled my soul a little bit more because I care a lot about the people in the buildings.”
When it came to sustainability practices, Cedra had to educate herself, but she didn’t want to take the same approach to learning how to design healthy buildings. That’s why she went back to school. “I wanted to really invest myself in understanding the research and the toxicology and the methods of disease,” she says.
For Cedra, one of the most exciting aspects of her new pursuit is that the field is still relatively new. The WELL Building Standard, for which Cedra is an accredited professional, was launched within the past decade. She looks forward to helping the concept of healthy buildings catch on. “It’s been a challenge, but it has been so wonderful to pursue this passion and feel like there’s a possibility for meaningful change associated with it.”
