Human Habitats

November 22, 2016

Simulated Nature Research Gets Real, Part I

This article is a collaboration between Bill Witherspoon, founder, Skye Witherspoon, CEO, and myself in my role as Director of Research Initiatives at The Sky Factory. It was inspired by Bill Browning’s Real vs. Simulated Nature section in The Global Impact of Biophilic Design in the Workplace report, and its timely review to how past…

February 17, 2016

Biomimicry & The Biomimetic Office Building

An Interview with Michael Pawlyn, Architect & Author In The Biomimetic Office Building, lighting takes its inspiration from the translucent four-eyed spookfish and a spindly-legged cousin of the starfish, the brittle star, both deep ocean dwellers. The building’s glazed glass exterior nods to a mollusk’s iridescent shell, while our own double duty spinal column is…

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…

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 10, 2015

Flourishing Biophilic Urban Housing

According to the UN by 2050 nearly 70% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas, there will be more cities and more mega-cities. As our contact with rural landscapes decreases our alienation from greenery and living elements will increase unless we green the urban environment and the spaces in which we live.…