Our Hidden Roommates

An interview with Dr. Sarah Haines

The Indoor Microbiome is the complex, invisible world of trillions of microorganisms living within indoor environments. Its residents include bacteria, archaea, fungi and viruses. We live immersed in this ecological niche, for good or ill. A typical home can host between 500 and 1000 different species of bacteria in household dust alone, and thousands of species of mold, yeast and viruses are in the air and on the surfaces around us. Together they serve as the primary ecological interface through which buildings influence human biology. In this light, we are beginning to view indoor environments not merely as passive shelters, but as active, highly complex indoor ecosystems that actively influence our immune and endocrine function, and long-term wellbeing.

Today, we are joined by Dr. Sarah Haines, Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto and Principal Investigator of the IMEE Lab, to explore the foundational framework behind this shift. We will discuss the emerging perspective of "biologically informed architectural design" and the fact that architects and interior designers don’t just curate materials, they curate our basic microbial exposures and therefore our health and wellbeing.