incorporating biophilia at the design table BY PHAEDRA SVEC In the Waldorf education tradition, children go through the day in alternating periods of concentration and expansion, as if in a breathing rhythm where there is inhaling and exhaling.1 This biophilic structure is important for many reasons, but primarily because it is needed for children’s wellbeing and wholeness. It also promotes assimilation of knowledge, brain growth and creativity. In the inhaling or breathing-in phase the child directs his attention in a concentrated way to an activity that relates him to himself (solving a challenge, watercolor, knitting, listening to a fable, setting the table etc.). In the exhaling or breathing-out period, the child relates mainly to the surrounding world (free play, free running etc.). For each breathing-in period the child needs a breathing-out period and so a pattern is established in the structure of daily activities. As children grow developmentally, the periods of concentration gradually increase, but never is there a breathing in without a breathing out. I’d suggest that as adults, and creative people this in-breath and out-breath are still important. How can designers take in all the complexities of a place and a project’s pieces without an equal focus on the simplicity and the whole? How can we as designers maintain the rigor of design without the out-breath that replenishes our creativity stores. Practicing biophilia can generate a structure of breathing in and breathing out that is itself an expression of our innate inclination to affiliate with natural human rhythms.
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