THINK PIECES ARCHIVE

A New Year of Healthy Spaces and Coffee, Too

Happy New Year! At this time of year, we want to express our gratitude for our community of clients, partners, friends and neighbors. Because of you, we’ve emerged more focused, stronger, and healthier going into 2023. Making places better remains our goal. Spatial intelligence resonates more than ever as clients seek to redefine their organization’s new relationship to people, place, and the environment coming out of the pandemic. To get started, come see how we are approa

Healthy Places and Wellness: The Essential Things for the Return to Workspaces

According to an article from GlobeSt, there are some essentials that workspaces should consider for the return to work or hybrid models: corporate gardens, outdoor areas, and water features. Chuck Schreiber, CEO and co-founder at KBS, believes that people should return to their offices but what is important is how those office spaces can convince them to do so. The key for this relies on showing how these spaces are healthy and promote their well-being. In this sense, feature

Return to Work - or Not?

The problem of how a post-pandemic workplace functions is one we are addressing with many of our client partners. It is a complex problem, spanning issues of physical place, technology, policy, and human behavior. Many organizations consider their employee base a constant when developing future-of-work solutions. Discussions revolve around manager preference for in-person work vs. staff preference for remote work, how large of a technology stipend should we give remote worke

Why Classroom Environments Have a Big Impact on Student Learning

Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand recently posted a research about the impact of learning environments on student performance. In the article, the concept of ‘better classrooms’ is described as “buildings where the indoor conditions promote the comfort, health and wellbeing of students and teachers.” One key insight is that student performance can completely change when the classroom conditions are not appropriate. Factors such as lighting, temperature, noise l

How Fires Are Affecting Air Quality

Wildfires continue to leave significant problems for the west coast. Yesterday, NBC Bay Area reported that Willow Wildfire, which started on june 17th, has burned about 2,400 acres in the area of Los Padres National Forest. This has meant important problems regarding Bay Area air quality. “A wildfire that forced the evacuation of a campground and Buddhist retreat center has burned more than 3.2 square miles of dry brush in inaccessible terrain on California's central coast, o

Outdoor spaces are the solution for the return to in-person instruction

The return to classes after a year of isolation has forced school districts to rethink how to re-adapt learning environments and make them safer. The biggest challenge is to diminish the risk for virus transmission. Building, Design and Construction Magazine published a recent article that analyzes this reality in Los Angeles, California. “To that end, the Los Angeles County Office of Education has published a 53-page report that provides K-12 schools with Design Guidelines f

Measuring the Health of Your Spaces

We spend more than 90% of our days indoors but we have very little information on the health of those indoor spaces. That's why in 2017 we worked with a Bay area school to measure the health and energy performance of one of their newest buildings on campus. We installed a range of sensors in 8 classrooms to measure environmental variables such as: CO2 Concentration Levels (~ air quality) Air Temperature & Humidity (~ thermal quality) Decibel Levels (~ auditory quality) Lighti

Step Inside of Science...like really!

The New York Times has been running some really cool science stories this year, and a recent one on the benefits of fresh air ventilation in classrooms got their Virtual Reality (VR) treatment! Check it out here Scroll to the bottom and you'll see a QR code to try out. At MKThink, we're constantly measuring our environments to understand how they affect our behaviors and performance. We're both conducting our own research and leveraging the very good research being done aroun

Making Hybrid Minds

Once upon a time, there was a pandemic, and the children stayed inside. With stay-at-home orders and school closures, contemporary childhood is not the same. Playgrounds are taped off, and many parks around the country are closed. Coronavirus is a generation-defining moment, and experts are already considering the term “Gen C” for those born during this time. Schools are adapting to parameters like social distancing, as set forth by the Center for Disease Control and Preventi

An Update: Successful Higher Ed Covid-19 Response From "The Atlantic"

Pleased to highlight this informative article from The Atlantic, written by Aaron E. Carroll, Professor of Pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine. Prepared by a teaching physician, the piece highlights positive outcomes achieved through a combination of applying scientific knowledge and thoughtful planning, procedures, infrastructure redeployment, and proximity detection. Most importantly, it speaks to applying learnings to continually improve the health of the c

The Healthy Achievements of Emeryville Center of Community Life

ECCL was awarded the 2017-2018 ULI Global Award for Excellence Winner. Emeryville Center of Community Life (ECCL) consolidates Emeryville California's schools with community and family services, arts and recreation into one site, one locus of vision for a healthier community. It is a place of synergies and rich community connections, the kind that make communities vibrant, connected and healthy. Here the community welcome center and senior lounge, at times hosts community eve

Outdoor Learning for the Complete Child - Hillbrook School

Hillbrook School was founded in 1933 on the belief that the environment rather than genetics raises the child. While working on a campus strategy and masterplan effort, MKThink engaged the school community in exploring healthy outdoor learning potential to reinforce the school’s pedagogy, while helping keep the school’s heavily regulated footprint from growing. In collaboration with our team, the school implemented multiple tactical outdoor projects, including: - a new outdoo

The Y: Gotta Know: Healthy Response to Toxic Wildfire

Sample image of the AirAngel dashboard shows the “target” condition in green (healthy for everyone), “boundary” condition in yellow (sensitive populations are more likely to feel discomfort) and “amiss” condition in red (exertion and prolonged exposure will cause significant discomfort). Indoor and outdoor environments are being measured at select locations. Chief Operating Officer at the Y of San Francisco Jamie Bruning-Miles faced a major challenge during the wildfire seaso

Covid 19 Response: Success in Action - North Monterey County

When North Monterey County Unified School District (NMCUSD) was forced to suspend its in-person learning along with the rest of the California in the Spring of 2020, 4,765 students, the kids of migrant workers, 38% of them homeless and foster youth, were suddenly cut off from school and the essential services they relied upon for their daily survival -- access to breakfast and lunch, family services, internet, or just a place to stay during the day. Understaffed and overwhel

Comfortable Places for Learning: A Hawaii Story

It is the end of lunch recess and students are finding their way back into classrooms at James B. Campbell High School in Ewa Beach, Hawai‘i. They pass through a lush courtyard covered by a large breathable shading structure that cools the air before it enters the classrooms. The recent addition of the shade structure has transformed the courtyard, sparking a new garden project that features native plants. Lessons can be seen taking place there at times. In the classrooms the

What? Why?

You may notice me hanging out around San Francisco’s during the latest COVID-19 surge. I have been at the San Francisco Zoo, Stanford University, and the “Y” (YMCA) of San Francisco. Currently I am visiting a sample of Safe Streets San Francisco, and am also fortunate to have a sibling currently visiting O‘ahu and helping out there. I am the Air Angel, an experimental test rig whose role is to help stand sentry to provide insights to protect the human health of our public spa

Going Back to the Office: Embracing "Kick-Ass!"

Linkedin recently published 20 Big Ideas that will shape the world in 2021. One of those ideas was that in order for people to go back to the physical workplace, those places need to be "kick-ass"! - We believe that they need to be safe too, but Kick-Ass gets me motivated. They interviewed Brittney Van Matre Nike's director of workplace strategy and operations and she had the following to say: "...companies would be wise to entice people with either “a kickass headquarters w

Keeping People in Their Homes: Fannie Mae's National Energy Efficiency Research

Fannie Mae has been looking for innovative ways to keep people in their homes. From educational programs to homeowner friendly financial products and low-interest loans, they have been aggressively looking for ways to help homeowners navigate the sometimes turbulent financial waters. In the last few years those programs have begun to look at energy efficiency as one way to reduce a homeowner's monthly financial burden. And in 2018, in partnership with MKThink and Google, they

Why Embed in a Philippine Desert Forward Operating Base?

Because Saving Realized Energy Saves Lives: A study between 2006-2009 estimated that 1 in 9 casualties in the war in Afghanistan occurred during refueling missions to forward operating bases. Since the results were published the US Navy has led a concerted effort to reduce energy use on forwarded operating bases as well as to generate more energy onsite. As part of that effort, our team was engaged to investigate the actual energy use at these bases and the conditions that i