Bringing social value to the forefront of the built environment

Management consultant Christine Lunde Rasmussen and architect Helene Bekker often rendezvous. Either in Ramboll’s airy headquarters or at Henning Larsen’s bright studio further downtown Copenhagen. Both examples of offices designed for interaction and social cohesion. Like many times before, the topic is social value in the build environment. We sat down with them to understand social value and what it means to actors in the industry.

Helene: "To me, as an architect, social value in the built environment is the impact that the built environment has on all inhabitants, at many different levels and in many different ways. It is about how the built environment can increase the quality of life for all of us, whatever that may mean for us as individuals."

"For example, creating accessible community facilities can support local communities and combat loneliness - or creating green and active urban spaces in different neighbourhoods can invite and inspire children and adults to get out and adapt a more active lifestyle, which in its turn improves their health and wellbeing leading to reduced health care costs for the society as a whole."

Christine: "Well, I would agree with Helene that in the built environment, social value is the impact or the contribution of the city, the local area or a given building to quality of life. This may include a very broad range of aspects, such as health, inclusive growth, employment, community cohesion and so on - at individual as well as community level. This means we need to tailor our understanding of social value to the concrete project. For instance, in a project we work on called Happy Homes, our focus was on identifying drivers for happiness for people living in row-houses (terraced houses)."

Helene: "I see it as an integral part of our job to think about the social value and to incorporate solutions that support a positive impact and design physical environments that nurture what we often label ‘the good life’.

Think about it this way: the built environment shapes our movements and to a great extent defines how we move around, or who we meet on our way for instance. The built environment can increase or decrease the chance of interactions. That means the way we design has many social implications, so it only makes sense to consider it, when we design. Without that focus our work would be nothing more than aesthetics, shape, and form - and in worst case scenarios it can have negative social impact on individuals and communities."

Christine: "No, but that is what we are hoping to influence. Right now, there is not a culture for systematically working with social value, neither for being explicit on the impact we want to achieve and ensuring that design has the intended impact - nor for building knowledge to inform future design and transformations of the built environment. Social value is fundamentally about explicitly stating the change we want to bring about when we design, transform and build. How do we want our cities and buildings to shape our lives, and what trade-offs might there be? Only when we make this crystal clear can we ensure the highest impact with our projects."