Paul Scialla is a fan of workplace wellness initiatives. He’s just not a fan of wellness initiatives that stop at placing a treadmill in a workplace or offering nutritious snack options in the cafeteria. True wellness, he believes, is “built” into buildings. Scialla, a former partner at New York City-based Goldman Sachs, is founder of Delos, a real estate wellness company. He founded Delos, which in Greek mythology was the birthplace of the god Apollo and the healthiest place in the world, in 2008 while he was still a partner at the firm.”I saw the word ‘sustainability’ pop up in real estate. Everywhere I looked, it was focused on green. I wondered why we were stopping at environmental health/impact and weren’t more focused on the biological aspect. We spend 90 percent of our time indoors. I felt we needed to do a deeper dive.”
Driven by an interest in what he calls “wellness real estate,” Scialla got busy, assembling a team of doctors, scientists and architects to determine how they could infuse biology into the real estate/ sustainability equation. The result: WELL-certified interior environments whose amenities and technologies directly contribute to and enhance occupants’ cardio, respiratory, sleep and immune health. In 2012, he founded the International WELL Building Institute, a separate company that administers the WELL Building Standard®. In 2013, Delos worked with global CRE firm CBRE to create the world’s first office to be certified under the WELL Building Standard pilot program—CBRE’s Global Corporate Headquarters in Los Angeles, Calif. In October 2014, that project was awarded CoreNet Global’s prestigious H. Bruce Russell Global Innovator’s Award (GIA).
Today, Delos’ projects run the gamut from residential and mixed-use, to retail and healthcare to education and student housing. The company pioneered the STAY WELL® rooms, which are currently available at MGM Grand Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.
Health-enhancing components of a WELL building include posture-supportive flooring, circadian lighting (mimics the body’s natural sleep patterns); photocatalytic surface coating on high-touch surfaces that supports immune health (th ink built-in germ fighters); electromagnetic field shielding embedded into sheetrock (to protect occupants from harmful electromagnetic waves emitted from electronic devices).
By infusing sustainability and real estate Scialla says he believes he’s created biological sustainability. But his buildings don’t just make people feel good—they’re a vehicle for his company to DO GOOD in the world. He champions an idea he calls altruistic capitalism—simply stated, using revenues to form philanthropic projects around the world. In fact, Scialla devotes a portion of all revenues from buildings that achieve WELL certification to such projects—projects that include transitional homes and a children’s orphanage named after former US President Bill Clinton in Haiti. It’s an idea Scialla says he hopes will become the norm. “If we can tie philanthropy into a revenue engine, perhaps we can introduce philanthropic sustainability into real estate, which is very exciting.”
