All About Biophilic Design, The Trend That's Sweeping Architecture (2024)

FAQs

What is the biophilic architecture trend? ›

Biophilic designs incorporate natural elements and processes into the built environment, including buildings, interiors, and landscapes. This can include features such as plants, water features, natural light, and natural materials.

Biophilic design is an approach to architecture that seeks to connect building occupants more closely to nature. Biophilic designed buildings incorporate things like natural lighting and ventilation, natural landscape features and other elements for creating a more productive and healthy built environment for people.

This can include a sense of safety and protection, a balance of variety with regularity, fostering curiosity and exploration and engendering a sense of accomplishment and mastery over our environment. Our attachment and attraction to nature can also be tapped into through biophilic design.

Incorporating direct or indirect elements of nature into the built environment have been demonstrated through research to reduce stress, blood pressure levels and heart rates, whilst increasing productivity, creativity and self reported rates of well-being.

Biophilic design continues to influence interior decor today, as seen in the rise in the use of the color green, the trend towards indoor-outdoor living, and the return of wood and other natural elements in furnishings and wall treatments.

Improved well-being: Biophilic design has been shown to improve mood, reduce stress levels, and increase productivity. Environmental sustainability: By incorporating natural elements into the built environment, biophilic design can reduce energy consumption, water usage, and waste production.

1. Barbican Centre – London, UK. The Barbican Centre is one of the earliest and most famous examples of biophilic architecture. Opened in the 1980s as an estate in London, it's renowned for its striking, brutalist design.

BIOPHILIC DESIGN IS THE PRACTICE OF CONNECTING PEOPLE AND NATURE WITHIN OUR BUILT ENVIRONMENTS AND COMMUNITIES. The International Living Future Institute has seen a demonstrated need among the Living Building Challenge community for Biophilic Design resources that can take the practice from theory to reality.

For example, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Alhambra of Granada are arguably early biophilic designs. Biophilic designs include a range of concepts that a designer or architect can incorporate into their building designs.

The biophilia hypothesis posits an innate biological and genetic connection between human and nature, including an emotional dimension to this connection. Biophilic design builds on this hypothesis in an attempt to design human-nature connections into the built environment.

What is the psychology of biophilic design? ›

What is Biophilic Design? Biophilia is a hypothesis first introduced by psychologist Erich Fromm in 1964 and then re-introduced by biologist Edward O. Wilson. It's defined as the human instinct and impulse to connect with nature and other forms of life.

Potential Overuse: While the principles of biophilic design are powerful, there is a risk of overusing natural elements, leading to a cluttered or chaotic design. Striking the right balance is essential to create a harmonious and effective biophilic space.

It is just now that design professionals and researchers are pulling these together en masse and presenting them under the umbrella of biophilic design. There are three pillars of Biophilic Design: Nature in the Space, Nature of the Space and Natural Analogues.

Biophilic elements refer to anything that induces the sense of beauty of the natural world. This can include features such as plants, water features, natural lighting, or patterns and design styles that mimic nature like flooring with a wood effect.

The term biophilia was later popularised more dryly in a 1984 book by the biologist Edward O. Wilson who argued that we yearn for a connection with nature. It is this idea, of our hardwired desire for the natural world, that continues to drive the discussion.

Biophilic design celebrates the idea of a city as a combination of urbanism, evolution, technology, and the natural environment.