Megan Oliver, AICP
We are proud to announce that Megan Oliver, Associate Planner at Mahan Rykiel Associates, has earned her WELL Accredited Professional™ (WELL AP™) credential. In becoming a WELL AP, Megan joined a expert community of advocates advancing human health and well-being through buildings and communities around the world.
Thanks to a growing body of research, landscape architects and urban designers are more informed than ever about the relationship between health and the built environment. Since 2013, the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) has been investigating conditions in our physical and social surroundings that shape human health and well-being. As a vehicle for translating the latest scientific research into design guidance, IWBI created the WELL Building Standard™ (WELL™)—a performance-based certification program that outlines pathways for improving health-related outcomes across ten concepts.
Earning the WELL AP credential signifies Megan’s proficiency with WELL and reinforces her advanced knowledge of wellness in the built environment. Further, Megan’s achievement reflects Mahan Rykiel’s commitment to shaping intentional and thoughtful, people-centered spaces—from parklets to entire towns. A core mission of our work is to imagine and realize places that enrich the human condition. At Mahan Rykiel, we have often tapped into our intuition as designers when making sense of how our projects can help people thrive. We believe that our 40 years of successful projects in towns and cities throughout the world demonstrate our keen grasp of people-centered design. Now, WELL bolsters our insights by contributing evidence-based scientific research to back the best practices in design.
As the first Mahan Rykiel Associates employee to become WELL AP, Megan is introducing our designers to WELL’s robust methods for creating places that thrive by measuring, monitoring, and improving project conditions and features which impact health and well-being.
We are pleased to offer this new service. Whether seeking a WELL AP to guide a project through the certification process or striving to create buildings and spaces where people can be joyful and well, we believe that Megan’s expertise in design for well-being is a valuable resource that will offer additional solutions to meet our clients’ needs.
Congratulations to Megan on this achievement!
ABOUT MEGAN
Megan Oliver, AICP, WELL AP, is an Associate Planner at Mahan Rykiel Associates. Believing in the power of place to profoundly influence our mood and behavior, Megan is driven to design and shape spaces that foster healing and joy. Through her research-based design approach, Megan applies the science of human experience and perception to urban design and planning strategies. She employs storytelling, public art, placemaking, livability planning, and responsive spatial design interventions to foster strong communities and cultivate happier, more inclusive spaces and places. Over the past decade+ of her planning career, Megan has utilized a holistic and person-centric approach to help over one hundred communities craft visions for the future.
Since earning her certification, Megan has been exploring opportunities to implement WELL v2 features at Mahan Rykiel’s offices and has been learning more about the WELL Community Standard Pilot to scale up the impact of her work and touch the lives of a larger number of people.
