Humans are wired for connection to nature, and when your home is designed with that in mind, it changes how it feels to live in it every day.

Biophilic design uses views, light, natural materials, water and spatial patterns to bring that connection into your home, at any scale and budget.

In this episode, I share the science behind biophilic design, the specific strategies you can use, and the ones most worth leaning into for any renovation or new build.

Listen to the episode now.

Hello! This is Episode 433. This is Way #33 of the 44 Ways to Create Your Sustainable Home series, and we’re continuing through Section Seven: A Sustainable Site: Landscape Design.

Last episode, Way #32, we looked at the outdoor room as a sustainability asset. This episode talks about a bigger concept that you may or may not be familiar with, but can dramatically impact how you feel in your home, and the way it supports your health and wellness overall.

Way #33 is: Learn About Biophilic Design.

The connection with gardens, with light, with natural elements … all of that is scientifically proven to improve our well-being, our sense of relaxation and lower our anxiety levels overall. Design that capitalises on this is known as Biophilic Design.

The word ‘biophilia’ was popularised by a biologist named E.O. Wilson in a 1984 book of the same name. Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis proposes that humans have an innate, biologically grounded connection to other living systems. Not a preference or an aesthetic taste, but a deep evolutionary affinity for nature that is built into us.

However, the term was first used much earlier, in 1964, by psychoanalyst, Erich Fromm, to describe a love of anything alive and vital. The term ‘philia’ is actually Ancient Greek for a familiar love, strong affinity or friendship. And ‘bio’ comes from ‘bios’ which means life or living things.

Given that, as humans, we’ve spent the overwhelming majority of our evolutionary history in natural environments, Wilson’s argument is that this history has left a biological imprint: that our bodies and minds are literally calibrated to function in the presence of natural systems, and that being removed from them has a cost.

Biophilia isn’t just about landscapes or natural scenery, or even just plants and greenery.

It also relates to natural light, and the geometry or patterns we see occurring in nature.

We have a resonance with these that in research, shows up as stress reduction, enhanced cognitive abilities, improved health, lowered blood pressure and improved memory.

In the same year Wilson published his book, a researcher named Roger Ulrich published a study showing that hospital patients had faster recoveries and required less pain medication when they could see nature from their room.

Ulrich reviewed the records of patients recovering from the same surgery in the same hospital over a ten-year period. Some of those patients had a window with a view of trees. Others had a window with a view of a brick wall. That was the only variable. 

What Ulrich found was that the patients with tree views recovered measurably faster, required significantly less pain medication, had fewer negative evaluations from nurses, and had shorter hospital stays.

There’s a useful framework produced by Terrapin Bright Green, a US sustainability consulting firm, called ‘14 Patterns of Biophilic Design,’ which groups the design elements, or patterns, into three areas: direct experiences of nature, indirect experiences of nature, and the experience of space and place.

Let’s talk about some that have immediate and easily incorporated relevance to residential design.

Firstly, views to nature…

I’ve seen so many homes where windows are positioned based on how they look on an external elevation, and as a result, they look onto the fence or the neighbour’s wall, or into the street without much consideration of what they’re specifically looking at. 

You don’t need to have every window at eye level, and you can make most window arrangements look good on an external elevation with the right consideration of building form and materials. 

So, think about the view from the interior when positioning and designing windows. A window that frames a garden, a tree, looks down into a garden, or up into sky, can make a massive difference to the feel of a space internally.

This is also why it’s worthwhile thinking about what your garden will look like from the inside of your home, not just from within the garden itself. Where do you spend most of your time inside? What does your eye go to when you look up from the kitchen, or from your desk, or from the sofa? Designing the garden in relation to those sightlines is biophilic design in practice.

Secondly, the experience of natural materials is not just aesthetic…

Natural materials, including timber, stone, rammed earth, and clay render, engage the senses in ways that synthetic materials typically don’t. They have texture you can feel, variation you can see, and, often, a smell. 

Timber, in particular, has been studied for its physiological effects. Research from Japan and Austria has found that rooms lined with timber produce lower heart rates and lower cortisol levels than rooms without it. 

The ageing of natural materials also reinforces a connection to time and natural processes. Stone that weathers, timber that changes colour, metal that develops a patina. They’re evidence of the material’s relationship with its environment.

One of the practices I first worked with in my architectural career was Tonkin Zulaikha, now Tonkin Zulaikha Greer. Both Peter Tonkin and Tim Greer really drilled into me… that anywhere a human was touching or would graze their hand past, or be in direct contact with, would benefit from being a natural material. That humans respond to that tactility and connection. 

In my time at Mirvac, they really pushed back on the use of timber because of the maintenance requirements, and the problems they’d have post-occupancy with owners not maintaining things, or especially in the case of multi-residential where buildings were taken care of by the body corporate, we avoided using products like timber that required a lot of maintenance. 

But we did use natural stones and were also big on considering what people would touch and interact with, and things feeling like they looked. A rendered blueboard or rendered lightweight cladding, for example, was never to be used where someone could touch it – because it looks like masonry, but doesn’t when you knock on it, and that causes dissonance for the person experiencing it.

This connects to the material selection criteria we covered in Section Six of the ‘44 Ways’ series. When you’re choosing between a natural material and a synthetic one, the biophilic dimension is worth including in that assessment alongside the embodied carbon, longevity, and recyclability considerations.

Thirdly, prospect and refuge, and why it matters for layout…

This is one of the patterns from the Terrapin framework that I think you can really lean into in residential design. The theory, rooted in evolutionary psychology, is that humans have a preference for environments where they can see out (prospect) while feeling protected from above and behind (refuge). 

In residential design, this plays out in how rooms are positioned relative to views and enclosure. A living space that opens to a view on one or two sides, with solid walls or a lower ceiling creating a sense of enclosure on the others, produces a more instinctively comfortable environment than a room that feels exposed on all sides. 

Window seats and reading nooks are expressions of this principle: they offer prospect (you can see out) while providing refuge (you’re tucked in, with some enclosure around you).

When you’re reviewing a floor plan, think about which spaces offer prospect and which offer refuge, and whether there are places in the design that offer both simultaneously. Observe the space you live in right now and see where people gravitate – you may see these biophilic patterns showing up in those spaces.

Fourth, water and sound…

Water is one of the most consistently calming elements in the built environment. The sound of moving water has been shown to reduce cortisol levels and mask intrusive noise, which is significant in urban or suburban settings. 

A water feature doesn’t need to be large or expensive, but it does need to be built well and thought about from a maintenance point of view. If considering including one, discuss it with your team early so you can factor in what’s required, so it adds benefit to your home and doesn’t become a headache long term.

Lastly (but definitely by no means least), light and the connection to time and seasons…

Natural light and its relationship to time of day and season is another core element of biophilic design. This is distinct from daylighting as an energy efficiency strategy, which we’ve covered elsewhere in this ‘44 Ways’ series. 

The biophilic dimension of natural light is about connection to the rhythms of the day and year: the quality of morning light, the warmth of afternoon light in winter, the way shadows move across a wall as the sun shifts.

Homes designed with this kind of awareness, where you know when and where the light will be at different times of day and different seasons, have a quality that’s hard to articulate but immediately felt. 

I love seeing HOME Method members share how much they’re loving their home on the Winter Solstice, because it’s literally drinking in the warmth of the sunshine, and this beautiful natural light is bathing their home’s interior. You can see how much it’s elevating their mood and helping them feel great in their home. 

And equally, seeing their home design then consider the changing seasons, and as the year warms up, providing more shade from the hotter sunlight, and keeping their home’s interior this place of shelter that’s responding to the seasons appropriately. If you haven’t experienced this first hand, it can be hard to understand just how much this can improve your day to day life in your home, but it’s definitely worthwhile. 

In this Episode, I cover:

• The origins of ‘biophilia’, including E.O. Wilson, Erich Fromm, and the biological case for connection to nature
• The 1984 Roger Ulrich study that changed how healthcare facilities are designed, and what it showed about view, recovery and pain medication
• Two projects that make biophilic design legible at scale: the High Line in Manhattan and the Amazon Spheres in Seattle
• The Terrapin Bright Green ‘14 Patterns of Biophilic Design’ framework, with a quick walkthrough of the three sections and 14 patterns
• Views to nature, and how to design windows for what they look at from the inside, not just how they look on an elevation
• Why natural materials engage the senses in ways synthetic materials don’t, and the Japanese and Austrian research on timber-lined rooms
• Prospect and refuge, and how to use this layout principle in your floor plan
• Water, sound and light as biophilic design elements, and why connection to the rhythm of the day and seasons matters
• Why biophilic design is a sustainability strategy for both the building and your relationship with the world beyond it
• What to put in your Design Brief, including specific questions to ask about sightlines, planting views, natural materials and prospect-and-refuge spaces

Plus a whole lot more.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE NOW.

RESOURCES

UA blog post >>> The High Line and Amazon Spheres

Roger Ulrich’s 1984 study in Science on how a view of trees affects surgical recovery, summarised by the Center for Health Design >>> View Through a Window May Influence Recovery from Surgery

Terrapin Bright Green’s 2014 report on biophilic design >>> 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design

Research paper (PDF) on how the amount of wood in a room affects the body >>> Physiological effects in humans induced by the visual stimulation of room interiors with different wood quantities

Public park on a former elevated rail line in New York >>> The High Line

Plant-filled spaces at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters >>> The Amazon Spheres

Episode 432, on designing your outdoor room >>> 44 Ways #32

A free guide to simplifying sustainability across research, planning, design, materials, and building, from Amelia Lee’s 30+ years in residential design and construction >>> 44 Ways to Create a Sustainable Home

Access the support and guidance you need to be confident and empowered when renovating and building your family home inside my signature online program >>> HOME Method