The Effects of the Physical Environment on Employee Wellbeing and Performance: A Case Study on Healthy Architecture in Call Center Interiors

Healthy built environment is an emerging field of interest in architecture. It possesses various approaches regarding the scale and function of the architectural products. Even though health and safety issues such as emergency situations, fire codes, accessibility, and job security have been a part of spatial organization in architectural design for a long time, current understanding of design reveals that healthy architecture is not only about the absence of disease or infirmity, but also about a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being. It consists of various characteristics like possibility-driven, balanced, user fit, and long-term effective environments. This paper tackles with the characteristics of healthy architecture on an interior scale through a survey on call center interiors. Hypothesis of the paper is that human wellbeing centered design of the built environment in call center interiors contribute to employee performance and commitment. To measure the accuracy of the hypothesis, a survey has been conducted among the employees of a call center in Istanbul, Turkey. The outcomes of the survey are discussed in the discussion and conclusion section of the paper.