Biophilic design

Sustainability is one of the major challenges that cities will have to face the next decades. As one of its roots, biophilic urbanism has emerged to inject nature into the cities –externally in urban infrastructure, and internally within buildings. This deep connection between people and nature, not only brings mental and physical benefits but also gives a response to environmental challenges (Cabanek et al. 2020) which undoubtedly will play a significant role in the next few decades.

Even though the relationship has evolved over the history, there is a belief that humans have an innate connection with nature. For this reason, biophilic design is essential for people’s well-being since its principles enable designers to provide them opportunities to live and work in healthy places.

In one of the books that I used as my literature, William Browning identifies 14 patterns of biophilic design that will be used for the analysis of precedents and in the design process later.

WOHA. Parkroyal on Pickering. Singapore. 2013. Source: WOHA©