A framework for evaluating the impact of buildings on inhabitant well-being

• Well-being is a multifaceted concept with definitions that vary across disciplines. • Inhabitant well-being emerges from interactions between individual, collective and environmental domains. • A mixed-methods approach facilitates the analysis of relationships among elements. • Key Theoretical Constructs: relational dynamics, net positive outcomes, and collective approaches. Well-being in the built environment has become a significant area of interest for researchers and professionals across various disciplines. The evaluation of well-being is a significant challenge because the experience of inhabitants within buildings extends beyond their physical realm: it is shaped by interactions among individuals, building features, and relational dynamics within the environment and the broader community context. This multidimensional nature of well-being requires an interdisciplinary approach to deepen our understanding of how buildings impact inhabitant well-being. This study proposes a new framework to holistically evaluate the impact of buildings on inhabitant well-being by integrating collective dimensions of well-being and net-positive outcomes as well as focusing on the dynamic relationships among the components of the system. This marks a shift from a sum-of-the-parts perspective to a more holistic approach to building performance, where well-being emerges from the interactions between environmental, individual, and collective domains. The framework is grounded in a social practice perspective, employing mixed-method assessments that combine quantitative and qualitative methods. By operationalizing the framework, this study provides a roadmap for piloting assessment methods and analyzing multifaceted results, with the aim of uncovering collective and context-specific factors that influence inhabitant well-being. This approach seeks to bridge the gap between what is measured and what is experienced in the built environment, illuminating what truly matters to people and enhancing the relevance of design, operations, and management practices. It seeks to deepen our understanding of how these experiences can be better aligned with inhabitant needs and priorities, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration.