Trend check: Best of our 2020 predictions

Wellness architecture (#75)

Indoor environments are being constructed for optimal health, thanks to a growing focus on purified air.

• Purified air is becoming a sought-after amenity for house hunters. At Charlotte of the Upper West Side, a new luxury apartment building in Manhattan scheduled to open in 2021, each of the seven units will be outfitted with state-of-the-art air filtration technologies that purify the air by treating it with ultraviolet light.
• Hotels, too, are touting virus-scrubbed air as the latest amenity. The Distillery Inn in Colorado uses an anti-viral HVAC system with germicidal ultraviolet light to conduct a three-hour disinfection cycle between guests.
• The boutique Hotel Paso del Norte in Texas recently installed an air purification system called Plasma Air that emits charged ions to neutralize and filter out virus particles.
• New York governor Andrew Cuomo issued a mandate in June that all malls in the state are required to upgrade their air filtration systems in order to open.

Psychedelic health (#82)

Psilocybin, the active ingredient that gives mushrooms their psychotropic properties, is gaining recognition as an alternative treatment and being decriminalized.

• In November, Oregon became the first state to legalize magic mushrooms for mental health treatments.
• San Francisco senator Scott Wiener has announced plans to introduce a bill in 2021 to decriminalize psychedelics.
• Johns Hopkins researchers published findings in November proving that psilocybin, when combined with psychotherapy, is four times as effective as traditional antidepressants. The study comes almost a year after the university opened a center for psychedelic research with $17 million in funding.
• As psilocybin treatment gains legitimacy, companies specializing in the psychedelic therapy are attracting investors’ attention. Shares of Compass Pathways, which patented a synthetic version of psilocybin to treat depression, jumped 71% in September. Shares of MindMed have surged over 50% since the beginning of December and have more than tripled since the end of October.
• Psychedelic drug startup ATAI Life Sciences closed a $125 million Series C financing round in November. The German company is exploring the use of magic mushrooms and other psychedelics to treat mental health disorders.