Master-planned wellness communities & hotel sustainability with WATG
Mont Choisy smart city, WATG
Interview with John Goldwyn - hospitality industry veteran
In this episode, we take a deep dive into the world of sustainability and wellness in the built environment. Specifically looking at master planned destinations.
We're talking to John Goldwyn, Senior Vice President, Director of Planning and Landscape at WATG in London, a business with 75 years of history delivering masterplans, architecture, landscape and interior design services for hotel clients all over the world.
When Nobu, Shangri La, St. Regis, Belmond, Ritz Carlton, or Atlantis The Palm want to build their next hotel, resort or destination, they call WATG to get the job done. Industry heavyweights in other words.
Originally from Hawaii, the firm is especially strong in large scale real estate projects that integrate nature for its positive impact on both wellbeing and sustainability.
John is the man flying that particular flag in their London office. I've known John for a while now. And his passion, energy and focus continues to be a breath of fresh air, reminding me that there are people at the apex of the sector, pushing the same message around nature centric, people-friendly real estate.
In this conversation, John and I cover how biophilia can be integrated into high level real estate development strategy and master plans right from the start of a project.
John Goldwyn, WATG
Sustainability in the hotel industry and destination development
We look at how sustainable design can contribute to a smart city, how landscaping interventions can help restore native landscape to a tropical island, and the massive upswing in developer interest in pursuing and implementing the kind of green and healthy design ideas that John specializes in.
John Goldwyn
Thanks, Matt. Well, I'm a Senior Vice President, for WATG which is an international design firm. My team is master planning and landscape really looks at larger and more holistic projects.
Masterplanning for sustainable resorts and destinations
A lot of my work, thankfully, is repeat clients so they know the way that my team works and they know the way that we slot in with our other disciplines. But the idea is that the master planning is a kind of envelope that contains all the other elements.
So we have economists and strategists that sit within master planning. And the idea is that master planning sets the broad vision and the broad strategy, both economically and spatially. In terms of design and philosophy.
I like to think of it almost like as a project manifesto, the master plan, and then onto that you obviously slot in architecture, the major design elements of the buildings and interiors, then landscape design.
The other team that I lead, as well as master planning, is the 'spaces between the spaces', where the buildings interact with each other, that might be simple gardens, or they might be town streets, or they might be parks.
So in theory, you have these five service lines for our work in the hotel, resort and destination space: being strategy, master planning, architecture, and landscape and interior.
Masterplanning is the project manifesto. And if Master Planning is needed all the way through, then yes, it's a point of continuity. Sometimes, my personal involvement wanes on master planning, as landscape is waxing. So it's all very fluid and project specific, we don't really have a cookie cutter approach to anything, we tend to do whatever we need to because hotel projects are all so different, clients are different, and personalities are different.
image courtesy of WATG
Wellness and nature in master-planned developments
Matt Morley
So you're often working on large scale, mixed-use developments where you're basically building places, not just spaces, interiors and buildings, but the entire town. So from that macro perspective, how are you seeing nature and indeed wellness becoming a key focus and a sales feature of the masterplan?
John Goldwyn
Absolutely, absolutely spot on. We really are seeing that happen now! I trained as a landscape architect, but obviously leading a team of master planning. There's also a very architectural element. And obviously, the strategy team are very important in that as well.
Nature and biophilia is in my DNA, it's who I am as a person. And it's the way that I was trained. And it's what I've always been passionate about permaculture and holistic thinking around systems rather than you know, rather than designing buildings, hotels and resort.
I believe in designing places using nature as the glue that sticking them together, ensuring sustainable practices are there from the beginning.
I think that our industry in terms of the design industry, but also more specifically in our niche of hospitality has really cottoned on to this, the hospitality industry has woken up to the role of nature and, especially in the hotel sector.
In terms of sustainable initiatives and energy and water consumption, there's incredible photovoltaic technology now and there's brilliant water saving faucets for the rooms, but actually, if you cite buildings correctly, they will do lots of the work for you in terms of sustainability initiatives and reducing energy use.
So for example, out of direct sunlight in hot climates and using natural breeze corridors and natural drainage channels. So a lot of this, I suppose ecological or environmental background to which you refer. It's just good design.
Matt Morley
Do you think there is a turn towards Biophilia and the role that nature can play in creating a healthy environment?
Do you think there's any risk that sustainability, possibly even by biophilic design or nature inspired design, could become a commodity, standardized, no longer a point of differentiation for hotels, resorts or master-planned destinations?
image courtesy of WATG
Nature-inspired design
John Goldwyn
I don't mind to a certain level if it becomes commoditized if it becomes embedded because I think that we still as a community of people involved in the built environment we have so far to go.
It's nascent in big projects to be so aware of these things, adopting sustainable practices and looking to reduce greenhouse gases and carbon emissions for example, as well as using more nature in luxury hotels.
Hotel sustainability basics
So I really do want it to become part of every single project that I do. I don't think that there are any excuses for not doing integrating hotel sustainability basics and plenty of biophilia anymore. There's too much research and too much factual evidence about the fact that we really are running out of resources as a planet.
Biophilia for eco conscious guests
I'm a really strong believer that we are connected to nature. And I personally, I I proselytize about the fact that I feel connected to nature, I feel better when I'm connected to nature.
The benefits of just being connecting to nature by bathing in forests by, by bathing in clean and natural water, I think this is something that is going to be absolutely huge for our industry.
The case for sustainability practices
Matt Morley
How do you convince a client, this is the way to go?
John Goldwyn
I love nothing more than convincing a client that to do something they never even dreamed was possible, especially if it's not investing more money, it's just thinking differently by reducing energy consumption, making sustainability efforts and a green hotels philosophy part of what the project.
I think often consultants are very lazy in doing what clients ask them to do, which is, you know, obviously an important part of our jobs as well, this isn't about ego or arrogance, this is about giving a client an idea or taking them on a journey that they didn't even think was possible, if that means we plant trees or conserve energy then I'm happy.
Nature connection in sustainable hotels
I suppose you're thinking about hard nosed, dollar driven driven developers. But sometimes it's just saying to people look, this space that we're designing between these two towers, or this interstitial space between two buildings, let's just make a space for people to go and be in nature, perhaps its not about reducing waste specifically or reducing the environmental footprint or impact but it is about connecting to nature in that particular instance, it's all part of a wider plan.
And guess what, it's also really cheap for clients to build. I love this idea of people just being able to escape the energy of the city - cities are inspiring places. But some of my favorite urban spaces are places you could just go and sit decompress.
green building and healthy building certifications in real estate
Matt Morley
I think one of the things that the LEED green building and WELL healthy building certification have both done rather well is is make space for that exactly that what you described - the idea of not necessarily always giving a specific purpose to an area or a specific corner of a site, but just letting that connection with nature be the sole purpose, on occasion.
John Goldwyn
Obviously, they're both if you like box-ticking exercises because they're relating to meeting certain requirements for certain elements. So I'm all in favor of clients investing in these systems because it shows a commitment.
As a starting point, I think it would be extremely misleading to think that just because your, your project is adhering to these, these criteria that it therefore is the perfect biophilic and, you know, economically sort of viable in terms of sustainability. It doesn't. There's not a one size fits all. And I've studied so many of these distant different systems.
I love the way that WELL has a lot about mental health and wellness. And LEED is obviously I guess, the standard because it's one of the older older systems and BREEAM has great kudos in certain markets but I don't think there's a one size fits all global standard.
Let's be honest, there is a cost uplift on development costs for doing this so that I think it has to be motivated from the right place.
Tell us about your work smart cities?
We started in Hawaii, and Hawaii is a volcanic island. And Mauritius is a volcanic island. And strangely, there are a few parallels. I mean, they're on opposite sides of the world, opposite sides of the planet.
But you know, geographically and climatically, there are some interesting connections between the two. And a lot of working on on the smart city was about understanding this notion of what it is like to be a remote island.
I think that a lot of our DNA comes, as I said, from our Hawaiian heritage, so we were able to kind of program our brains to be thinking and the fact that Mauritius is at face value probably the safest country in Africa.
Smart cities as the future of sustainable development?
It's very beautiful, it has a lot of tourism, but smart cities are all about what's next. What's beyond that, not for people like you and me but for the people from the island and for the people who from Mauritius.
So there's sort of three main pillars which are live, work and play. And what we had to do to achieve the planning permission and sort of get into the project was make sure that all the three pillars of live work and play were equally balanced. And to be honest, if you can balance the work pillar, then living and playing is kind of easy for a firm like WATG.
Sustainable practices in development
So with that in mind, we had to look at the best sustainable technology and a lot of things like creating this sort of Alfresco lifestyle. Mauritius like Hawaii is a great place to just sit outside and have a coffee or walk down a food street. But at the moment on the island, the infrastructure is not there to do that.
So we really looked at creating great outdoor space, great alfresco dining and great sort of work opportunities for incubating business and things like that. And then the hope is these kinds of little connections are made between these sort of small elements and then all of the city starts to develop around that.
Restoring the natural landscape
Matt Morley
Iread that you did a lot of work around an attempt to restore the natural landscape to try to bring the landscape back it had been damaged or was was it it was suffering at some point and you did work to bring it back.
John Goldwyn
I mean interestingly enough, all the early settlers from England and Holland took all of the beautiful native ebony trees from Mauritius and turned them into sailing boats. So Mauritius was denuded of its its beautiful natural fauna and flora many hundreds of years ago.
And really the planting of sugarcane, which is obviously the way that lots of our clients made their living was essentially a monoculture. So a beautiful diverse ecosystem and biosphere has been removed to create a wealth generating crop of sugar.
So we've been working with the Center for Middle Eastern plants from the Royal Botanic Gardens, on re understanding how to use native plants in Mauritius to be ornamental plants. Now, the Brits, obviously, we've been tweaking and messing around with the plants that we use for many hundreds of years.
Biodiversity in sustainable tourism
The Victorians really got very good at understanding that, but it's really just quite a nascent thing in Mauritius.
And we're really excited about where it's going, we hope it'll influence the daily life of the people that are actually living and working, you know, the meridians themselves, but they'll have a renewed interest in their in their Flora as well. So, yes, it's absolutely one of our most important cornerstones of the project.
Matt Morley
And so the idea that you'd be restoring indigenous species, then the piece that happened in between then would be this process of globalization and effectively man's impact on the planet, right, where we suddenly start importing and exporting seeds and species all over the world where perhaps they have not necessarily would be on natural circumstances.
So it's an attempt on a small scale, to take things back to sort of how they were to a more natural state.
image courtesy of WATG
Hotel sustainability pressures on an island
John Goldwyn
And also things like food. I'm a big advocate in edible landscapes. So you imagine that salad is flown in from South Africa, to Mauritius? To me, this seems absolutely, it's bizarre, and it's based on economics. And it's based on the needs of the hotels that are there, they fly in fresh flowers, as well for the hotels. A
It's not only crazy in terms of embedded carbon and just, you know, the sort of bizarre nature of that, but also, Mauritius is a great place to grow salad. Mauritius is a great place for for cut flowers, so we can create local economy as well.
Resilience in a sustainability journey
And also resilience because again, if there's another COVID situation, and you're relying on another nation for your for your food security, this is not really in line with with with where the world needs to be in 2020 and beyond.
So yes, it's it's absolutely part of the smart city again, thinking about maturity. It's about having food security and water security, at the very heart of the community, rather than having a city which consumes which consumes raw materials in terms of food and hydrocarbons.
Sustainable cities as an organism
And we're really looking at this notion of the city as as an organism that produces its own food that recycles its products, and obviously really high up on the list has this incredible Alfresco lifestyle as well. This this mental wellness that I think is so important for all of us.
Landscaping strategy in sustainable tourism
Matt Morley
It's powerful stuff. I mean, in terms of that visionary landscape strategy, and around the master planning and landscaping - what it can do in terms of creating a sustainable future?What type of restrictions or barriers are you coming up against working with clients in that regard? What is holding you back?
John Goldwyn
Strangely, Matt, it's often government policy, sometimes our thinking is ahead of government policy. I don't think that governments will fully stop environmental and climate change, at the city level. But sometimes it might even be that the policy is based on an out of date philosophy or it may be based on protectionism of the sugar industry.
And sometimes it's client conservatism because they don't believe. I mean, I see it because I've been around the world. This is my 17th year now. I've seen a lot of stuff along the way and picked up bits and pieces from different geographies and different places. And sometimes it's just having the ability to synthesize all of these inputs, and there just isn't the infrastructure in place.
A smart city gives a developer all sorts of financial benefits from getting the smart city planning permission, which I think is great. But yeah, I would say often it's government policy, and sometimes it's just that the developers and landowners are scared to try something different.
Greening the hospitality industry
Matt Morley
So, but then you'd occasionally get a project like say th green block project in London where the impetus comes from above where someone like the Mayor of London.
John Goldwyn
The Green block was a very interesting process, we ran an internal innovation competition, which was won by a Turkish girl on my team. And she envisaged a building product that was essentially alive. So you imagine a basic unit of construction that was alive. And about the same time, Sadiq Khan was also starting to really gather people around his vision for a greener London as well.
Integrating biophilia into the city
And so what I really tried to do was synthesize all of these inputs into something meaningful, and to create a way that we could actually if you'd like retrofit Biophilia to London, the idea being that to make really sort of deep change, to our streets requires all sorts of planning permission.
I was more inspired by something like the Chelsea Flower Show, which although I'm not a huge fan, pops up overnight, sits there for a few days, and then disappears again. And the idea being that we could make incredible interventions into our urban realm using planting and recycled materials. And as I said, the sort of biophilic elements to actually change the spaces that people could go and inhabit.
Nature in the zeitgeist
At the same time, autonomous cars, were starting to move up the agenda and this idea that maybe we didn't need so much space on our streets for parking, and what would we do with with with disused parking spaces and all of these kinds of things.
So again, so many different sort of Zeitgeist elements of of the time, which I guess was now must be, I guess, three years ago now or something like that, we started to sort of gather around these around these points to create a sort of philosophy.
Urban greening in a sustainability strategy
And what we've ended up with is this, I like to call it kind of guerilla urban greening this idea that you can go in and create green spaces in existing spaces, without having to tap into the drainage network without having to get planning permission necessarily, without having to do all the sort of listed building consent and all the things that make projects move slowly.
So we're now working with some fairly established landowners in the City of London and beyond.