BioScore

Designing for Wellness: It’s Time to Measure What Really Matters

Across the built environment, a quiet revolution is underway. Designers and developers are not only asking, "What’s the carbon footprint?" They’re asking: "How does this space make people feel — and how do we know?" The answer lies in what’s long been considered intuitive but under-measured: wellness.

We’ve long believed it — but now, it’s measurable.

Designing for Wellness: It’s Time to Measure What Really Matters
“We shape our buildings, and afterward our buildings shape us.”
— Winston Churchill

Decades of research show that access to natural light, greenery, fresh air, and acoustically balanced spaces directly impacts our physical and emotional well-being.

  • A Harvard study on healthy buildings found that occupants in high-performing indoor environments scored 61% higher on cognitive function tests.
  • WELL-certified spaces have been shown to reduce absenteeism by up to 30%, improve sleep quality, and boost productivity.

But here’s the challenge: while sustainability tools precisely track energy and carbon, there’s still no practical way to quantify human-centred impact — especially within the tools architects and designers already use.

That’s where BioScore comes in.

 

What Is BioScore?

BioScore is a new innovation from Symetri’s Co-Innovation Lab — designed to help teams measure the wellness and biophilic performance of their projects directly within their design workflows.

It’s the first tool of its kind to offer a structured scoring system for qualities long considered subjective:

  • Daylight access
  • Views to nature
  • Acoustic balance
  • Natural materials
  • Spatial variety
  • Refuge and prospect

Whether you’re working in early-stage massing or detailed interiors, BioScore helps you make wellness visible — not just aspirational.

This isn’t just about aesthetics or checklists. It’s about giving designers and project teams the ability to communicate wellness performance in the same way we do with energy models or carbon data. 

 

Why Wellness Needs Measurement

Wellness is no longer a luxury — it’s a strategic priority.

From public spaces to offices, hospitals to homes, there's growing demand to prove how spaces support mental health, physical comfort, and emotional connection. And yet, these are the very qualities that often fall outside traditional BIM, LCA, or energy tools.

Without data, wellness gets deprioritised.

BioScore changes that — by making wellness measurable, comparable, and improvable across design iterations.

It does for human experience what LCA tools have done for embodied carbon — providing a common language and structure for better decisions.

 

Backed by Addnode Innovation

Earlier this year, BioScore was selected as the winner of the 2025 Addnode Innovation Program — an initiative that funds and accelerates groundbreaking ideas from across the Addnode Group network.

This support gives us more than funding. It gives us access to deep cross-industry expertise, platform flexibility, and the space to build BioScore with scale and collaboration in mind. We’re currently in Phase One of the project — transforming BioScore from a research-backed concept into a working tool. The Co-Innovation Lab has completed early investigations, drafted the core workflow, and begun mapping integration routes into design tools such as Autodesk Revit and Forma.

 

A Co-Creation Sprint — Not a Beta Test

BioScore isn’t being developed behind closed doors. We’re launching the Co-Create Sprint — BioScore, where selected industry contributors will work directly with our team to shape:

  • Which wellness metrics matter most
  • How scores are calculated and displayed
  • How to best integrate into live design processes

Participants in the sprint will receive:

  • Early access to the MVP
  • Extended free use after launch
  • Recognition as founding contributors helping shape a new category of design intelligence


This isn’t a beta test. It’s a co-creation opportunity.

 

Wellness Is the Next Frontier in Performance

At Symetri, we’ve long believed that sustainability must evolve beyond the building envelope — that it must also include how people experience the spaces we design.

BioScore represents a new chapter in that journey — one where wellness isn’t just talked about, but tracked, tested, and improved with every design decision.

Because if we can measure carbon, we should be able to measure calm.
If we can optimise daylight for energy, we can optimise it for human connection.
And if we believe people are the ultimate end users of our buildings, then their well-being should be just as measurable as any material input or energy output.

BioScore is more than a tool, it’s a movement - toward quantifying the human side of sustainability.
And we’re building it with the industry, not just for it.

 

Find out more about Symetri’s Co-Innovation Lab


Paths to Net Zero: Insights for Sustainable AEC

10 December 2024

As the built environment sector accounts for nearly 40% of global CO₂ emissions, achieving net-zero carbon has evolved from aspiration to necessity. In response, Symetri hosted the Paths to Net Zero: Insights, Technologies, and Solutions webinar series in September 2024. This article distils key takeaways from the series, offering a snapshot of challenges, trends, and impactful approaches shaping the future of decarbonisation in the AEC industry. 

What are Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and why you need them

10 September 2024

In the construction industry, EPDs are crucial for reducing carbon emissions by allowing comparisons between different materials, helping architects, engineers, and designers select the most sustainable options. Manufacturers also benefit by optimizing product impact and promoting carbon transparency.

What is an LCA? 3 Examples of Life-Cycle Assessments in Building Projects

10 September 2024

A Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a powerful tool used to measure the complete environmental impact of a building project. It evaluates the carbon footprint and other environmental effects throughout a building's life, across four key stages: production, use, end-of-life, and beyond. Below are three examples of how LCAs can guide decisions for more sustainable building projects.