Using biophilic design to heal body, mind, and soul

[Music] thirty years ago I traveled the world and I was searching for my future path my journey took me to Asia where I saw the power of buildings that reflected spiritual and cultural beliefs to Central America where Mayan temples represent the relationship between us and the universe and to Australia when my own relationship with all other living systems was cemented something shifted within me during this experience I got to live and breathe the earth notice the slightest form of life watching or as a hundred kangaroos bounded across a plane and see a sky full of

so many stars I thought I had entered a new universe it was the definition of feeling alive and then real life set in I had to join the rest of society and spend most of my time inside it made me wonder why have we become inside creatures why have we passively accepted buildings that disconnect us from nature I decided to become an architect and here was my mission to connect people and nature in the habitats that we create for ourselves buildings my vision is simple what if when every building is created it tells a story

of that place it tells a story of the thousands of species that have inhabited that place for the past 10,000 or more years currently we just bring in the bulldozers and we don't even stop to be curious we have become inside creatures with our opportunities to be immersed in nature reserved for our weekends or our vacations so what if this would different what if we're spending the 90% of I'm inside we're also connected to nature one of the walls between inside and outside were broken down I know intuitively that I feel more alive and more

vibrant when I'm connected to the changing seasons and I can feel the change in weather on my skin research backs up my intuition a simple window in a hospital room has been shown to reduce both patient stays and the amount of pain medication those patients receive test scores increased by 25% in classrooms that have daylight none of this is surprising let's face it not many of us like spending our days in dark or windowless rooms and yet 45 percent of global office workers have no daylight I spend too much of my time in convention centers

with no windows and when I emerge hours later to discover it is raining when it was sunny when I entered I feel cheated and a sense of disorientation sets in a study in the city of Portland showed that violent crimes in neighborhoods decreased significantly as tree size and density increases another study showed that people who live adjacent to a forest have healthier amygdalas a region of the brain that processes memories and emotions with an increasingly urbanized world not many of us can live next to a forest so why don't we bring nature inside why don't

we bring forests wetlands and streams back into our cities and re wild our neighborhoods it's a simple concept and for thousands of years it was the only way we knew how to build architecture was infused with ponds atria and Gardens for animal and plant motifs and brought the outside in by keeping plants and animals close indigenous architecture all across the wall to show an incredible creativity at adapting those buildings to that climate using evaporative cooling wind tunnels and desert climates for example buildings used to be a representation of who we are and the specific place

they're built in but once electricity was incorporated into our buildings we no longer needed the warmth of the Sun or the cooling breezes to stay comfortable windows started to seal up buildings became wider and the spaces in the middle darker and more removed from outside together with the global economy came a sense of place lessness buildings are a commodity rather than an expression of who we are or the place they're built in as well as our reliance on technology we are glued to the nearest power outlet and determine not to let a speck of sunlight

get on our screens further disconnecting us from nature it is great to see the trend of bringing in plants and green walls into our buildings but to really connect people in nature we're going to need a lot more than this we're going to need a concept called biophilic design which translates literally to love of life the potential of biophilic design is to do more than just bring us fresh air daylight and views in buildings renowned biologist IO Wilson has a theory but our brains have been mapped to think like hunter-gatherer species for thousands of years

and this plays out both in nature and in our built environment for example prospect and refuge we like to have a sense of what's coming towards us prospect but at the same time we like to feel safe you can see this playing out in a busy restaurant you do not have a reservation and the only tables available will be in the middle right the booths around the edge or on the outside where you can feel safe but see what's coming towards you we'll all be taken first someday watch where people hang out in pools of

sunshine on edges and shorelines or with each other we can't escape our instinctive sense of safety and security there are many other intuitive patterns of behavior that happen when we're immersed in nature that we can bring into our buildings the sense of exhilaration we feel at the edge of a cliff fear and or the sense of excitement we feel when we discover something new exploration and discovery as well the variation in light and pattern and space and texture that fills us with this sense of peace and tranquility when we're immersed in nature can all be

brought into our buildings by folly designs being used to transform our workplaces from monotonous beige cubical farms to spaces that have varying acoustics daylight and interaction opportunities it's also being used to transform our schools and hospitals where it has been the norm to keep the young and the SEC in sterile and dark environments when kids are asked to draw their absolute favorite space 96 percent of them will draw a space in nature it is great that our kids are still connected to nature but why do we not bring this connection inside would they have a

different answer if they were kids in this classroom at the Birchy school in Seattle where they can watch the rain flowing through their classroom and interact with the changing seasons by phallic designs being used all around the world at this hospital in Singapore you compare your medical treatment with the sights and sounds of a tropical forest the air that passes over your hospital bed carries the sound of birds we are so busy creating sterile environments in our hospitals that we have shut out the power of nature to heal for the - hoy Maori in New

Zealand the money they for for as a settlement from the New Zealand government to recognize that their land was taken from them without their agreement was best spent first to build a cultural center a place that could create a vision of the future that was not saddled with the past the building is created from wood harvested from the to highlands and mud bricks created on site as part of a job training program this building represents the relationship the two high people have with their land with each other and with all other living systems many global

companies are starting to incorporate biophilic design they've picked up on studies such as the one from the University of Michigan that show that there is a 20% increase in productivity after people spend one hour in nature that's just one hour Amazon sees the value there spheres that the new headquarters in Seattle are not merely a statement they're specifically there so their employees can be immersed in nature and return to their desks refreshed and more productive Google is implementing biophilic design guidelines and Etsy is incorporated by phallic design into their headquarters in Brooklyn New York the

only thing stopping us from living and working in biophilic buildings is us we are not making it a priority it is not necessarily more expensive to create biophilic buildings it is often cheaper if we can once again rely on the warmth the Sun or the cooling breezes to stay comfortable we'll reduce our reliance on electricity and fossil fuels contributing positively towards the reversal of global climate change if we use materials from our region will reduce the carbon impact of transporting them from all around the world so what it comes down to is this we are

not only facing a choice between two different approaches to architecture we're facing a choice between two starkly different views of human nature are we separate from nature or are we part of nature if we assume that we are separate from nature then we get buildings that look like this look familiar they're everywhere as Winston Churchill once said first we shape our buildings and then our buildings shape us and it's worth spending time in buildings like this forces us to become shadows of ourselves and that's not only detrimental to our happiness it's detrimental to our health

but there is another view of human nature and one that says that we are intuitively and instinctively connected to the world with which we have evolved if we assume this to be true then we get buildings that look more like this these are buildings where the inspiration for the whole form has been generated as an inspiration from nature in this case a termite mound these are buildings where the whole space is created just by the shadows moving through it during the day these are spaces where we can feel the textures changing under our feet and

we can hear the sound of the wind where we can see the clouds moving across the sky and smell the rain where we can interact with each other and where the boundaries between inside and outside are broken down before we lose our connection to the world with which we have evolved and become accustomed to the barren tombs of our buildings it is my hope that by phallic design can bring a small wildness biodiversity and connection to each other while we are inside biophilic design is not just an approach to architecture that is good for the

planet it's an approach that allows us to celebrate all that is good about being alive in doing so become a better happier and healthier version of ourselves thank you [Applause]