Biophilic Design

November 5, 2015

Top 3 Hospitality Interiors

The accommodation we choose when travelling is an important aspect of the whole experience and should naturally be somewhere that will aide our path to decompressing the stress of our everyday lives, whilst aiding relaxation and calm. We’ve picked out three contrasting examples of hotels that daydreams are made of; that embody biophilic principles to…

October 19, 2015

The Role of Landscape Architecture in Creating Biophilic Environments

When we think of biophilic design, we think of nature. Its primary intention to reintroduce nature into our built environments. Yet much of the project and literature focus of biophilic design has been on interior environments. What about applications of biophilic design to the external built environment? There is a noticeable bias towards architecture and…

September 30, 2015

How Can We Design Mindful Offices?

How can we design the mindful office? What would a mindful office look and feel like? An introduction to mindfulness We live and work in a world full of distracting pollution. With increased digital connectivity through access to emails, social media, the web’s encyclopedic repository of information and all the other distractions that are commonplace…

September 25, 2015

3 Inspiring Schools Using Biophilic Design

In my earlier article I outlined the benefit of biophilic design in educational settings and showed you a lovely example of St Mary’s infant school designed by Jessop & Cook imbued with biophilic principles. Further research shows that optimising exposure to daylight alone can improve school attendance by an average of 3.5 days/year and test…

September 9, 2015

3 Vital Principles to Ensure Well-Being at Work

In the majority of cases a workers environment, usually an office, is not catered towards maximising their potential health and well-being. This must change. The World Health Organization describes wellness as “…a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.“. Do most desk workers fall into…

July 24, 2015

Incredible Examples of Biophilic Offices

There is so much evidence about the advantages of biophilic design elements being incorporated into office design. So, we thought we’d share some inspiring examples of office interiors that are putting theory into practice; creating spaces that are teeming with vitality where workers can feel inspired and thrive. Ljubljana Chamber of Commerce and Industry The…

June 1, 2015

Nature by Design: the Practice of Biophilic Design

The challenge of biophilic design is to address prevailing deficiencies of contemporary building, landscape and interior architecture by initiating a new framework for the beneficial experience of nature in the built environment (Kellert et al 2008, Kellert 2012, Kellert and Finnegan 2011). Biophilic design is about creating good habitat for people as a biological organism…

May 21, 2015

14 Patterns of Biophilic Design: Non-Rhythmic Sensory Stimuli

This is the third post in an on-going series outlining each of the 14 patterns of biophilic design, a collection of biophilic strategies codified in Terrapin Bright Green’s “14 Patterns of Biophilic Design” paper. Pattern 3: Non-Rhythmic Sensory Stimuli Nature is never static; it’s always moving, growing, adapting. We notice when a room is visually…

May 19, 2015

Biophilic Engagement in Healthcare Spaces, Part II

According to the Institute for Building Efficiency, over 50% of the buildings that will still be in use by 2050 have already been built; and close to ¾ of these buildings are over 20 years old, before the principles of biophilic design were well understood, let alone widely applied. On a similar note, the European…