DISSERTATION ON:

ACTIVE LIVING
ARCHITECTURE

COMPILED BY:
RITIKA BHATIA
 WHAT IS ACTIVE LIVING DESIGN?
Active Living Design is the
theory that:
the design of the built
environment has a direct impact
on public health, and
specifically todays public
health epidemics of obesity
and related chronic diseases.

Active living refers to

opportunities for incorporating
physical activity into the routines
of daily life, as well as for sport
and recreation.
EXAMPLES
OF ACTIVE
LIVING
INCLUDE :
walking or cycling
with children to
school;
walking, cycling or
catching public
transport to work;
or replacing short
car trips to corner
shops and parks by
walking or cycling.
 KEY RECOMMENDATIONS IN THE
ACTIVE DESIGN PERSPECTIVE:
Research has suggested that greater land use
mix is correlated with lower obesity.
Evidence suggests that the more schools,
grocery stores, newsstands, and other
useful destinations in an area, the more likely
residents are to walk.
Facilitate for cyclists : Facilitate bicycling for
transportation and recreation by incorporating
infrastructure like safe indoor and outdoor bicycle
parking.
Access to fresh food : Studies have
demonstrated that the presence of full-service
grocery stores in a neighbourhood is associated
with healthier diets and lower weight among
residents.
Conversely, high concentration of fast food with
increased weight and risk of obesity among area
residents.
It is recommended farmers markets will
compliment grocery stores.
Pedestrian pathways : Provide seating,
drinking fountains, restrooms and other
infrastructure that support increased frequency
BUILDING EXTERIORS:
Design building exteriors and massing that contribute to a pedestrian
friendly urban environment that include variety and transparency, multiple
entries, stoops, and canopies

BUILDING PROGRAMMING:
In residential environments, place functions such as community and
recreational spaces, mailrooms, and management offices on an alternative
floor or a pleasant walking distance from individual residences and building
entrances, in order to encourage daily bouts of walking and stair climbing
Design spaces and activities to encourage more personal communication
between people within the building, and less sedentary, electronic
communication. Provide spaces where people can stay together and engage
in productive, pleasant and safe social interaction.

APPEALING AND SUPPORTIVE INTERNAL WALKING ROUTES:

Incorporate interesting views along paths of travel within a building. These
views may include:
natural and designed landscapes,
nearby architecture,
interior views of people-oriented activities, and
visually appealing interior finishes.
Provide day lighting along paths of travel.
BUILDING FACILITIES THAT SUPPORT EXERCISE:
Provide physical activity spaces such as exercise rooms, active play spaces,
and multi-purpose recreational spaces in public, workplace, and residential
buildings.
Provide these spaces with interesting views. Research indicates
exercise is more appealing with views to nature and human activities.
Locate physical activity spaces in centrally visible locations in the building,
to help increase awareness and use of these spaces.

STAIRS :

Increase stair use among the able-bodied by providing a conveniently

located stair for everyday use, posting motivational signage to encourage
stair use, and designing visible, appealing and comfortable stairs.
 AIMS OF ACTIVE DESIGN
Active Design calls on the
architect, urban planner,
landscape architect, public
official, and building owner to
help focus on four primary
ways by which healthier habits
may be introduced and fostered:
Alternate transportation
active buildings
active recreation
access to healthy nutrition.
 ACTIVE LIVING DESIGN AIMS AT
PROVIDING:
Alternate transportation emphasizes increased access to safe and usable cycling
and walking routes. This involves creating complete streets- streets which are
usable in a safe manner for cyclists and pedestrians. This strategy requires
carefully designing bike lanes and sidewalks for maximum safety and
effectiveness.
Active buildings encourage the use of stairs over elevators/escalators. They also
feature outside walking paths, bike storage, and wellness education. Finally, active
buildings are located within the urban fabric allowing for access via alternate
transportation.
Active recreation can be realized in many different ways from increasing access
to existing parks to designing outdoor plazas and playgrounds which are vibrant
and engaging.
Access to healthy nutrition comes from introducing community gardens and
farmers markets in cities as well as numerous other strategies aimed at eliminating
food deserts.
 Building Design: Creating Opportunities for Daily
Physical Activity

Opportunities for incorporating regular physical activity into daily life can
be found not only outdoors but inside buildings as well. Architects can help
building occupants incorporate physical activity into their daily routines
through the following measures:
Increase stair use among the able-bodied by providing a conveniently located stair
for everyday use, posting motivational signage to encourage stair use, and
designing visible, appealing and comfortable stairs;
Locate building functions to encourage brief bouts of walking to shared spaces
such as mail and lunch rooms, provide appealing, supportive walking routes within
buildings;
Provide facilities that support exercise such as centrally visible physical activity
spaces, showers, locker rooms, secure bicycle storage, and drinking fountains;
Design building exteriors and massing that contribute to a pedestrian friendly urban
environment and that include maximum variety and transparency, multiple entries,
stoops, and canopies.
 OBJECTIVES
Develop and maintain mixed land use in city neighbourhoods;
Improve access to transit and transit facilities;
Improve access to plazas, parks, open spaces, and recreational
facilities, and design these spaces to maximize their active use
where appropriate;
Improve access to full-service grocery stores and fresh
produce;
Design accessible, pedestrian-friendly streets with high
connectivity, traffic calming features, landscaping, lighting,
benches, and water fountains;
Facilitate bicycling for recreation and transportation by
developing continuous bicycle networks and incorporating
infrastructure like safe indoor and outdoor bicycle parking.
 scope
1. A PUSH TOWARDS A GREENER ENVIRONMENT: Such projects not only develop
greener surroundings but also compliment the growing urge to work in sync with nature.

2. REDUCTION IN DEPENDENCE ON NON-RENEWABLE SOURCES OF ENERGY:

It is very important in todays world to decrease the amount of electricity and other
ingeniously generated source of energy and encourage eco-friendly and non-depleting energy
sources that can serve us better and for a longer period of time.

3. ADDING AESTHETICS TO THE ENVIRONMENT: Blending art and architecture has

been a natural remedy to overcome many obstructions while designing a space, therefore
active living architecture counts upon the idea of developing attractive and aesthetically
brilliant spaces under it. For example neat and lavishly deigned walkways and circulation
areas become more conventional for the people to use.

4. USING ARCHITECTURE AS A TOOL TO MEDICATE: Active living architecture tries

to make full use of itself to medicate people so that architecture is beheld from a totally new
perspective; it is therefore a step towards innovation in this renowned field of art.

5. IMPORTANCE OF BUILT ENVIRONMENT INCREASES: Architects nowadays need

to concentrate on the built environment as much as the space to be built.
 Limitations
1. NOT SUITABLE TO EVERY SPACE: Such strategies tend to fail in places
where handicapped, elderly or differently-abled people live their daily lives
because they cannot cope up with such physically challenging aspects of
architecture.

2. HIGH PRICES IN MARKET: Maintenance and construction costs of such

conceptual places is quite high, making it unaffordable for most of the classes of
society.

3. REQUIREMENT OF MORE SPACE AND RESOURCES: Due to non-

availability of space for horizontal growth, actively designed projects are hard to
execute.

4. DISTURBS THE IDEA OF COMFORT TO SOME EXTENT: There is some

sort of difficulty in convincing people to leave their comfort zones in todays
world, thus everyone readily does not accept such concepts of design.
METHODS TO EXECUTE.
ACTIVE DESIGN- BUILDING SCALE: INTERIORS

Design at the individual building scale plays an important role in Active Design. Ramps
and monumental stairs help to encourage increased physical activity in commercial
offices and in many other public spaces such as theatres, museums, and retail. Medical
professionals and public health experts have widely discussed and published evidence
showing small incremental increases in physical activity daily can improve overall
wellness.

MONUMENTAL STAIRS

1. Communicate between two frequently occupied floors

2. Be visible from the main entrance (or centre of activity)
3. Be visually appealing
4. Have a gentle rise/run slope
5. Be located stair close to (but slightly more visible than)
elevators
6. If fire rated enclosure cannot be avoided (due to code),
consider implementing fire rated glass enclosures to
increase transparency, visibility and aesthetics
7. Be wide enough to easily accommodate expected flow
8. Be located in a naturally day lit area if possible
RAMPS
1. Communicate between two frequently occupied floors
2. Consider locating the primary lobby on the second
floor nearest to the monumental stair or ramp
3. When designing in double height spaces, consider
designing work areas on an elevated platform accessible
via ramp and elevator. (This may help to capture
additional storage space underneath, and enables the
work areas to use under floor air distribution systems).
ELEVATORS
1. Locate out of direct line of sight from building entrance
2. Program controls to run just slightly slower than
average (hint, this helps to save energy also!)
BUILDING DESIGN
1. Include shower and changing areas for staff who cycle
to work
2. Include a park like walking path outside to enable staff
to exercise before or after work (or take a break midday)
3. Provide educational displays on how the building
contributes towards wellness
4. Locate amenities such as break rooms, copy rooms,
mailrooms, shared equipment spaces, and meeting
rooms a pleasant walking distance from work areas.
ACTIVE DESIGN-NEIGHBOURHOOD
SCALE: EXTERIOR
LAND USE MIX
1. Collocate places where people live and work with
the places where they learn and play. Develop areas
which locate office and commercial areas with relative
adjacency to schools, parks and housing.

STREET CONNECTIVITY
1. Avoid designing street networks with block lengths
longer than 200 -250 feet.
2.Minimize the use of closed streets which prohibit
traffic flow.
3. Focus on Safety First in designing places where
pedestrians and vehicles may cross perpendicular to one
another.
4. Include local emergency personnel in PreDesign
vision sessions when laying out street structures in new
developments to ensure emergency vehicles can safely
travel.
PARKS AND RECREATIONAL SPACES

1. Ensure bikes + pedestrians have easy access to parks

2. Design parks according to local cultural preferences
and allow for use by all age groups.

PLAZAS

1. Design plazas as open space within the urban fabric

along pedestrian routes.
2.Provide sun shading devices in hot climates, and
provide overhead coverage in rainy climates.
3. Incorporate public art and/or areas for street vendors.
 PHYSICAL FEATURES OF THE
STREET ENVIRONMENT
These characteristics were defined qualitatively as:

Imageability is the quality of a place that makes it distinct, recognizable,

and memorable.
A place has high imageability when specific physical
elements and their arrangement capture attention, evoke feelings, and
create a lasting impression.
Enclosure refers to the degree to which streets and other public spaces are
visually defined by buildings, walls, trees, and other vertical elements.
Human scale refers to a size, texture, and articulation of physical
elements that match the size and proportions of humans and, equally
important, correspond to the speed at which humans walk.
Transparency refers to the degree to which people can see or perceive
objects and activityespecially human activitybeyond the edge
of a street.
Complexity refers to the visual richness of a place. The complexity of
a place depends on the variety of the physical environment.
 THE THREE
3DS
Researchers have identified THREE D variables that are key to analyzing the
relationship between urban design and travel patterns: Density, diversity, and
designthe original three Ds coined by Robert Cervero and Kara Kockelman
have since been supplemented by destination accessibility and distance to transit.
1. Density
describes the concentration of jobs and people in a given urban zone,

THREE 3DS
while diversity gauges the number, variety, and balance of land uses in
the area.
2. Design
includes the characteristics of a neighbourhoods street network and
streetscape.
3. Destination
accessibility reflects the ease of travel to a central business district or
other concentrated area of jobs and attractions. Distance to transit
measures the average distance from home or work to the nearest rail
station or bus stop.
 Conclusion
Designers have an essential role in addressing the
rapidly growing epidemics of obesity and related
chronic diseases, especially in light of mounting
scientific evidence demonstrating the impact of
environmental design on physical activity and
healthy eating. By adopting the strategies
included in the Active Design Guidelines,
architects and urban designers can help to
significantly improve the health and well-being of
the population.