Imagine how devastating it would be if a building you were involved with was rendered permanently unuseable, your insurance didn’t cover you and you had to carry the economic impact of that outcome. This scenario is one architects, designers, investors, developers and operators will all face in the near future.

We’re fast approaching a time when people will wear or carry pollution sensors and these will guide decisions about where they spend their time. Air and water quality, light and material off-gassing will all be constantly monitorable and if a building or environment is toxic, people will leave as swiftly as they’re able.

Buildings and places will be quickly identified as toxic and will plummet in value. Who would want to stay in toxic hotels, work in toxic offces, send their children to toxic schools or live in places which undermine their health and wellbeing?

Here at CLAD, we think the arrival of pollution sensors will create a revolution in architecture.

Everything will change, as consumers exercise their choices in their millions and developers, investors and operators scramble to ensure their real estate is clean.

We’ll see the value of some properties soar, while others become less than worthless – they’ll actually become a liability.

Buildings will be graded by the quality of their environments, with star ratings for healthy buildings.

And so we’ll enter the era of WELL buildings – a time when health and wellbeing are the starting point for all developments, rather than a superficial afterthought.

While sustainability – via standards such as LEED and BREEAM – has been a precursor to WELL and heralded it in some ways, the new era will be very different because it concerns the individual, not the corporation and because it will be driven by fear as well as altruism.

And while toxic buildings damage health, WELL buildings will protect us from toxins and create healthful environments: shocking new research just released by the World Health Organization (WHO) found 90 per cent of the world’s population is “breathing air which is damaging to health”. Millions are dying as a result.

WELL buildings will be havens from this pollution, screening out the toxic particles which cause cancer, heart attacks and lung disease and creating environments which promote life. As a carrot and stick, it doesn’t get any more compelling.