10 minute read
Incorporating Biophilia at the Design Table
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.
- Stephen R. Kellert + Elizabeth F. Calebrese
In Breath...
When I begin a biophilia workshop, I usually start it with a quiet visualization exercise that helps define biophilia, not just in words, but so that participants can develop a visceral understanding of the concept. I invite them to close their eyes, take a breath, and recall a natural place that was readily visited by them during their childhood or at a formative time in their life.
I ask them to remember it with each of their senses in turn until they can almost smell the water or reach out and touch the ground. I ask them what the place meant to them, what they went there to do or process and how they interacted with the elements. I ask them many questions and try to evoke their natural responses to the living things in that place.
After a pause, I ask if that place still exists today as it did in their memory. For many, those places have been completely transformed. If they are still there, I ask participants how it would feel if someone had plans to develop their place, paving it or modifying it unrecognizably. I ask them to notice where in their bodies they feel that sensation. For me, it is at the base of my throat, I feel a tightness in my vocal chords. I ask them to touch that place on their body. That feeling is biophilia. We love our place. We love it so much, it becomes a physical part of our existence, fundamental to our human experience of life.
When I first relate the requirements of the Biophilic Environment Imperative (of the Living Building Challenge) to a new design team, I usually hear a fair amount of grumbling about the logistics and cost of getting the entire team together in one location for eight solid hours to talk about only one subject - biophilia. At any point in design, but particularly in the beginning, there are many pressing issues that need to be addressed. In some cases, this eight-hour meeting requirement can become a barrier to taking on the Living Building Challenge because the team doesn’t feel they have the luxury of time to dedicate to this imperative.
While I know the time pressures in design and construction are ever present and ever condensing, I also feel really discouraged every time an architect expresses this sense of time scarcity from the very beginning of the project. It suggests that we as a profession have accepted these external pressures without a challenge. I hear about and feel this time scarcity every day in my own life as well – it seems real. Yet many design teams also waste time in re-design whenever goals are unclear or team communication misses the mark. I have come to believe that we always have enough of everything we need (time, money, energy etc.) but we often fail to imagine the best use for what we have.
When I hear myself saying, “There isn’t enough time,” I also hear the voice of one of my mentors in Biomimicry, Dr. Dayna Baumeister, who once commented that a building is a human artifact that will be around in some form for much longer than 100 years. Yet, how is it that design and construction teams do not feel they have the time to consider and work through how our buildings can improve the ecosystem functions of the living systems they occupy?
below images: At the beginning of a biophilia workshop, participants are invited to close their eyes, take a breath, and recall a natural place that was readily visited by them during their childhood.
We must practice being a part of the life that we want our designed places to support.
On any given day, I feel that I do not have time or energy to read or make up a story with my sons, and yet I do it because the penalty for missing the story is missing the childhood. I have even been known to fall asleep while telling a story and they tell me that is when it gets most interesting. Each morning I feel that I do not have time or energy to exercise, then I remind myself that these extra pounds and aching joints are the result of not maintaining healthy habits every day. It is the same with design habits. We must practice being a part of the life that we want our designed places to support.
In working with design teams to help them move toward more regenerative practices, I often look for habits to introduce that when practiced daily can help a team leap-frog to a new level of performance and integration. Practicing biophilia is one of those habits. Like any new habit, it is important to break the big overwhelming goal into bite-sized chunks that will seem more manageable. If I can get a team to start down the path of Biophilia, I find it not only transforms the regenerative nature of their project, but it also transforms the designer. The practice of biophilia over time may also chip away at the agreements we make as a profession around time-scarcity. This false sense of scarcity keeps us from manifesting our best work, while learning to observe the abundance of life can help us to fill up our creative reserves.
When I hear, “We can’t afford to do biophilia for eight hours,” or “Getting everyone together in the same place is too expensive,” I ask if we can meet virtually for four hours. If I can get them to start, I believe they will discover value. And they almost always do!
Out Breath...
Before the four-hour virtual session, I ask project team members to prepare by picking three questions from a list of twenty-five place-based queries from the Whole Earth Bioregional Quiz. I ask them to spend 30 minutes researching the answers to questions like, “What is a migratory bird that passes through this area?” or “Who were native peoples in this area and what did they eat?” I ask them to collect information and images. If we meet in person, I ask them to bring a natural object from the place to share. Depending on their personal sense of time scarcity, I find that most people do the homework because it is enjoyable. When they do, they often come to the meeting excited, already having learned something new about the place. The act of learning something novel seems fundamental to unleashing human creativity.
After we complete the visualization exercise, I ask participants to share their place-based information. If they didn’t bring research or images, I ask them if they can tell a story about an experience of the site. Then I usually share the research that I have prepared ahead of the meeting that includes biological, geological, watershed, climate, and climate change data and analysis. I ask a few key team members to prime the slide deck with cultural, biological and ecological information and rich imagery. The dialogue we share helps the client and the rest of the design team to engage more deeply in the essence of the place and its living systems and to see patterns of life. The purpose of the exercise is to inspire a desire to participate with the living system and a curiosity to learn more.
In Breath...
After some immersion in place-based research, we shift directly into a discovery process to uncover the early opportunities for integrated biophilia. We may not yet know everything that a biologist or an ecologist might like us to know about the place, its functions and stressors, but hopefully we have at least captured the initial instincts and impressions of a biologist and perhaps their early research. Ideally, we have also invited someone with this expertise to the work session. McLennan Design often partners with Juan Rovalo, a biomimetically trained biologist with Biohabitats, or a number of other favorite ecological consultants who work in the design industry. It also works to include someone from a local nature preserve or conservatory organization eager to participate in a design conversation.
To guide discovery, I like to use a biophilia framework developed by Terrapin Bright Green 2 which consolidates and abbreviates the six biophilic categories and seventyone biophilic design elements from Stephen Kellert’s framework 3 into three simple, digestible categories and fourteen patterns of biophilic design. The Terrapin framework is accessible and helps teams get started. The
WHOLE EARTH BIOREGIONAL QUIZ biophilia questions
What endangered species are in this place?
Can you name five edible plants of the region?
Who were the indigenous peoples of this place?
What migratory birds pass through the area?
What is the path of water through this place?
I am always surprised by the responses I get during the feedback session . . . clients often express a deeper sense of purpose and responsibility to the place and reverence for the development decisions they are about to make.
three primary categories are: Nature in the Space, Natural Analogues, and Nature of the Place. This framework helps me to guide the project team to start working from the outside first, moving gradually into the building bringing natural elements and functions inward, and then moving toward interior patterns and details. We focus on the multisensory experience the team intends to create.
We start with a matrix that has been populated with a few ideas. Then, through dialogue or small group work, we populate as many ideas as arise when prompted by the matrix. This ideation period examines and expands many possibilities while stimulating creativity. Later, the lead designers will determine which ideas best support the overall design principles of the project.
Out Breath...
Four hours will fly by all too quickly and leave the team hungry for more. As a closing session, I ask each person to share their experience of the workshop, something that they found energizing and something that they feel compelled to pursue further. This again engages people personally and sets the project up to continue to integrate biophilic design and place-based research that will ultimately fulfill the rest of the requirements of the Living Building Challenge and result in a rich multi-sensory experience of the place, its culture and living systems.
I am always surprised by the responses I get during this feedback session. Participants often express gratitude that they had time to take a much-needed creative breath cycle during the design process. They express joy at having been able to reconnect to their childhood place, and to remember some of the reasons why they are doing this work. Clients often express a deeper sense of purpose and responsibility to the place and reverence for the development decisions they are about to make. The process helps them articulate and express some of the more intangible goals for the project. Some of the consultants or contractors who are not usually involved in the early ideation phase usually enjoy the opportunity to play and feel valued as part of a team. All these intangible benefits from four hours of well-planned time help to frame the value of incorporating biophilia in design. This momentum can carry forward and guide integrative design throughout the project.
There are many reasons to incorporate biophilia in design. Biophilic design fosters a love of place and therefore fosters the stewardship of that place and its living systems over time. Biophilic design promotes wellbeing for both people and the living systems of a place. And claiming time for biophilia in the design process gives creative people the opportunity to connect with the innate natural rhythms of design, allowing them to refill creativity stores and connect to the purpose of their work. Instead of fueling a scarcity mentality, it builds abundance. �
END NOTES
1 (Heckmann, Helle, 2011) Daily Rhythm at Home and its Lifelong Relevance. Waldorf Today. https://www.waldorftoday.com/2011/11/daily-rhythm-at-home-andits-lifelong-relevance-by-helle-heckmann/
2 (Browning, W.D., Ryan, C.O., Clancy J.O. 2014 ) 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design: Improving Health and Well-being in the Built Environment. New York, Terrapin Bright Green LLC. http://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/14-Patterns-of-Biophilic-Design-Terrapin-2014e.pdf
3 (Kellert, S. et al., 2008) Biophilic Design: The Theory, Science, and Design Practice of Brining Buildings to Life. John Wiley.
PHAEDRA SVEC is an architect, regenerative systems planner and Director of Regenerative Design with McLennan Design. With over 20 years of experience in the sustainable design movement, she has served as chief sustainability trouble maker on many award-winning, highperformance projects.
