Views of Nature

Views of greenery, trees, water, or other natural elements provide occupants with an opportunity to connect with nature, contributing to reduced stress and enhanced mental health.

Key Terms

• Views of Nature are natural elements that are visible to regular occupants, including greenery, trees, and water.

Strategy Insights

• This strategy is included to ensure regular occupants have access to natural elements that have a conclusive research body supporting them:
  • Views that qualify :
    • Outdoor natural elements, such as vegetation, greenery, trees, water bodies or other such elements. 
  • Views that do not qualify: 
    • Hardscape, such as concrete, asphalt, glass, or otherwise non-vegetative materials
    • Views to the sky and clouds. (Note, “sky” yields health benefits to occupants through a separate strategy, Natural Daylight.) 
• Under Fitwel’s Workplace scorecards, the strategy focuses on regularly occupied workstations as the intent is for regular occupants to have qualifying views of nature when working from their workspaces. Regularly occupied workstations do not include lounge seating, tables in break areas, seating in conference rooms, and other frequented areas that would not be classified as a regularly occupied workstation. 
  • Note, regularly occupied workstations under the MTBB scorecard also include workspaces used by on-site building staff such as receptionists, security, engineers, etc. even if they are third-party employees.
• When applying this strategy in a Multifamily Residential (MFR) project:
  • The term “dwelling units” represents individual residential units, not the number of bedrooms per unit.
  • Outdoor common spaces within MFR properties do not need to be included; this strategy only applies to indoor common areas.
  • Functional rooms, such as mail rooms and laundry rooms, may also be excluded. 
• There is no minimum or maximum amount of greenery required for this strategy, only that at least one natural element be clearly within view of the qualifying window(s). 
• For more guidelines on how to calculate the number of workspaces (for Workplace and Retail) or dwelling units and common spaces (for Multifamily Residential) with access to views of nature, use the Fitwel Views of Nature Calculator.

Documentation Guidance

• For Workplace scorecards:
  • • When submitting floor plans, please highlight, outline, and/or label all regularly occupied workstations on each relevant floor in order to demonstrate that all required workstations have been documented and included in the total count.
      • • For Full Credit, the plans should identify the qualifying window views of nature. 
        • For Alternative Compliance, the plans should locate and identify all indoor natural elements and show the distance from the qualifying workstations.
    • When submitting photographs, the documentation should show that workspaces have qualifying views to outdoor and/or indoor natural elements. Please do not submit outdoor photographs or photographs taken directly at the window since it does not show that regularly occupied workstations have direct views of nature. 
    • If photographs show height obstructions, the documentation should label the height and/or confirm on the photographs and/or plans that those workstations have not been included as a qualifying workstation. 
• For Multi-Family Residential scorecards:
  • • For Strategy 7.1: Views of Nature:
      • • Floor plan(s) should be the building floor plan(s) of each level that includes dwelling units. Dwelling unit floor plans should not be submitted. 
        • The floor plan(s) should also be annotated to identify which windows and/or facades have qualifying window views of nature to demonstrate the accuracy of the calculations. 
        • Facades are labeled in the plans and photographs (e.g., north, south, east, west). 
    • For Strategy 8.2: Views from Common Spaces:
      • • outdoor common spaces do not qualify as regularly occupied common areas. For this strategy, the common spaces must be indoors. 

Sample Documentation

Calculation and Photograph examples for Alternative Compliance

Note, the above sample documentation uses rendered images for demonstrative purposes only. Any project submitting for a Built Certification must submit true-to-life photographs. Rendered images, drawings, and plans will not be accepted for Built Certification.