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Skogluft – Forest Air. Reconnecting people to nature

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Skogluft – Forest Air. Reconnecting people to nature

We speak with Morten Kvam, CEO of Skogluft. Not only does it sound beautiful and uplifting, in Norwegian it means “Forest Air”. We talk about how plants are essential to have in the built environment and how the main founder of Skogluft Bjorn Virumdal was a mechanical engineer and realised that biological models were needed to explain the effects of nature indoors. NASA had conducted some research on how astronauts would be affected by the lack of nature. After speaking with them to explore their findings Bjorn then conducted further scientific research to prove how different plants and different light affected people in different working environments.

His research looked at three main aspects: the feeling of being awake, headaches and respiratory problems and he took readings before and after the intervention.

The results showed the positive effects of having nature indoors. Tiredness reduced by 40%, headaches reduced by 35% and concentration problems reduced by 16%. Morten tells us that they have over 7.2kg worth of evidence that nature indoors is good for us!

We also talk about the importance of light. The positive effect of light reflecting on nature. “We are programmed to stay in nature, we have always been surrounded by plants and light together,” Morten says. “It makes people react more positively when we see light reflected on plants.”

In his magic brush of biophilia, he says we should be looking to install nature everywhere, and “just like toilets are compulsory in buildings so should nature be compulsory indoors everywhere.” I think I’ll be sharing that last thought many many times. It’s straightforward and simple to grasp - nature should indeed be compulsory in every building.

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Learn how to Lead Change - Essential Tools for Biophilic Designers

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Learn how to Lead Change - Essential Tools for Biophilic Designers

Change is about people and when it comes to people, there is no formula and there is no one way, this is challenging and hard. For designers, architects, planners who are trying to convince people to do something different, to do something maybe that business has never done before, what tools do we need to help take our clients on that “change” journey with us?

I was lucky to catch up with the Change Master, Jennifer Bryan, who will also be speaking at Workplace Trends in London on 18th October 2023. Jennifer shares with us some tips to help you lead that change, for her there is “no change without learning and no learning without change,” and it has to come from a “people centric perspective.”

Jennifer, gives us some sound advice. She describes what she calls the “end person in mind approach.” If you think about the person who is the furthest away from the decision making room, when they first hear about the change (whether that the watercooler gossip or a town hall) if you can make that initial moment for that positive then you will have a positive initial moment for everyone else in between.

There are 8 different reasons why people resist change. Jennifer outlines some with us here. Sometimes it’s because they don’t understand the change, or it could be how they perceive it, it could be fear or emotional, or historical. If you want to fine tune your potential to lead change, get your hands on her book: “Leading People in Change”. Understand where that “resistance” might be coming from. Ask the questions so you might understand why they might be resisting. Take them on a bit of a journey. Help people understand the “so what”.

We forget that other people aren’t in that same space, and we need to be able to articulate that “so what” but it has to be that “so what” for them.

Think of this podcast as the essential spanners in your “Toolbox of Persuasion.” There’s a lot of good advice in this podcast for those involved in bringing Biophilic Design into the mainstream. We can help leaders and managers understand that Biophilia is not just fluff, help them to visualise a positive outcome and from a different angle.  

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Building with Nature

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Building with Nature

Are you an agent for change? What is the barrier to designing better? Sometimes it is the apparent complexity of legislation governing ecology, planning and design that prevents people from discovering the best way of doing something. Fortunately, there is a simple award scheme that helps developers, builders, planners and designers navigate the myriad of paperwork and advisory bodies.

We speak with Dr Gemma Jerome, Director of Building with Nature, which helps define what good looks like in terms of green infrastructure (the way planners talk about nature). What I particularly love about Building with Nature is that it also helps give nature a seat around the table, especially at the beginning of the planning process and helps nature become a specification driver in planning and development. Building with Nature has an open-source Standards Framework, a one-stop-shop for all sectorial knowledge and expertise including Nature recovery, Sustainable water management through nature-based solutions, wellbeing, access and inclusivity to open and green spaces.

We talk about how planners and designers can use the Building with Nature Award Scheme as an external verification to tell the story of what they’ve done, to share learning, and to reassure key stakeholders who want better outcomes for people and wildlife. For instance, if you need to reassure communities that the developer has thought about all these things, or the local authority needs external verification, or investors need assurance. The Award Scheme is measurable and so offers this metric-based assurance to help you demonstrate to stakeholders you are planning and designing with the goal of reaching net zero, supporting nature recovery, as well as supporting people’s health and wellbeing 

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Sensory Reactivity

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Sensory Reactivity

When we design spaces, we need to consider how beautiful a place looks, how useful it is, is it fit for function and so on. We should also consider how the sensory elements of the space also stack up. In other podcasts and also in the Journal itself, we look at how our senses are impacted by sound, light, smell, even the haptic elements (those things we touch), smell (is the air fresh and clear) and many other things. All of us are affected by the impact our environment has on our senses, some of us more than others.

In this episode, we speak with Dr Keren MacLennan, Assistant Professor in Neurodiversity in the Department of Psychology, Durham University. Her research focuses on understanding how autistic people’s sensory processing differences relate to their mental health and experiences of different environments. She is co-producing research to support mental wellbeing to make environments more enabling for autistic individuals

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Plants to the Rescue! #PlantsatWorkWeek2023 LIVE in Oxford!

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Plants to the Rescue! #PlantsatWorkWeek2023 LIVE in Oxford!

Live footage! We are really excited to join Plants@Work in Oxford to interview Ian Drummond the concept designer behind this year’s Plants @Work celebration! “Plants to the Rescue”.

An ambulance makes an appearance at the Oxford Business Park. Everyone is keen to know who’s in need of medical help without appearing too nosey. Watching from afar one person noted something wasn’t quite right – plants kept appearing, peeping out of the back of the ambulance and round the corners of the doors. Where was the patient? And what had happened?

Read on and watch!

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Town Planners as Doctors for Mother Earth – Garden Cities for the 21st Century

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Town Planners as Doctors for Mother Earth – Garden Cities for the 21st Century

It seems that in the 21st century we have even more challenges, from tackling climate change and biodiversity decline to an ageing population. Dr Wei Yang, influential thought-leader and a powerful advocate for climate action and nature-based solutions, advocates a people centric approach to community and environment. It is fundamental to create a balanced system for people, nature and society to exist in harmony. When we are dealing with so many different complex issues, we need to take a simple approach, with the main focus being that without nature we cannot survive. We need a mindset change when it comes to civic planning especially.

 

As human beings we have taken from nature and not given back to nature, and Dr Yang argues, as the Garden City Principle celebrates, we are missing a trick. There is a misunderstanding of garden cities. When we say “garden cities” people think, lots of trees. But it is a sophisticated, yet simple, social economic model. Using a land value capture model. Through development the land value increases and that can be captured providing social economic support to the community.

 

Dr Yang discusses how state run Social welfare can be a very top down approach and not necessarily what the community needs and there is a frustration in general with the Town Planning profession. Dr Yang opens our eyes to the fact that planning is in fact multi-disciplinary, not only is it an applied science discipline but it is also an art discipline. This highly sophisticated profession cuts across so many different disciplines, but, she argues, we need to ensure we maintain compassion and selflessness when we are planning our towns and cities. In fact, town Planners should be Doctors for Mother Earth

Read on and listen…

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Reconnecting with nature will save our society

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Reconnecting with nature will save our society

Sustainability matters, it is a matter of survival. For Carlo Battisti, President at Living Future Europe this is essential. We cannot design or build without considering this.

We already know the solutions, we need to implement them.

Carlo co-founded the Biophilic Society and coordinates LFE biophilic design strategy. “There are so many global issues to solve, our responsibility must start from the built environment, we know that 40% of emissions come from built environment and these have an impact on global issues.”

Each time we build, we start from scratch which means it’s difficult to standardise the processes, also the sector is so slow to change, but the built environment shapes the way we are living.

Carlo tells us about his experience and also about the Living Building challenge framework which was developed in 2006. We are now at the 4th version of the standard which was published in 2019. Biophilic Design has always been a core part of this framework. If we design and build with a better connection to nature, using natural light, better airflow, etc, there will be better energy consumption, greater energy efficiency. Also of course, there are lots of studies which show that bringing sufficient daylight into enclosed spaces, for instance in schools or hospitals, patients recover quicker, students learn faster in classrooms. There is such interesting and robust data.

The Biophilic Summit is taking place on 7th June 2023. The details of the summit programme and how to register can be found here: https://lfeurope.regfox.com/biophilia-summit-2023

Read on…

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The River of Life – Orientate Earth, Built Environment and Sustainable Workplace

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The River of Life – Orientate Earth, Built Environment and Sustainable Workplace

Harvesting the energy of our people, is a key message in this great podcast with Jaime Blakeley-Glover, founder of Orientate.earth and a collaborator with other businesses all working towards the same goal, to make our world and our environment a better place to live and thrive.

 We talk about his the “Social benefit of buildings”. For Jaime, we have a huge responsibility in relation to how we create our built environment, the decisions we take will have an effect for years after we’ve gone. We leave a legacy, and a choice. Do we create amazing awe-inspiring connected places or create dull and lifeless ones?

It is only by understanding and engaging with all the stakeholders, from the building owners to the people who work, visit, use and supply the buildings that will allow us to think about the place our buildings and places have in responding to the needs of people now and in the future. We need to broaden out how we think of things.

Buildings are more than just Units and assets, these are places where people live, how we build and design affects their lives and wellbeing. Let’s look at the Social-economic indicators as well as the “warm” data, this collective imagination to assess this broad set of information, and then respond to it.

Biophilic design and nature-inspired design does support a more sustainable way of living. It is proven, that if we care about something we do more to protect it, if we bring nature more into our sense of view, we will do more to protect it. We can also be inspired by nature and look at how buildings and cities are living systems.

We are part of the living system, in terms of cities, and nature.

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How to design to incite a feeling? Workplace Design 101

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How to design to incite a feeling? Workplace Design 101

How do you design to incite a feeling? We spend five days of our week in the workplace, and it impacts our psychology massively. When we walk into a space, how do we design to excite that sense of awe. For Becky Turner, workplace psychologist for Claremont Group Interiors, they have conducted research to examine how we replicate that feeling of “oooh” in the workplace.

For many it is the sense of sense of connection that drives people to the office, what else will encourage the workforce the consider the cost of the commute whether it’s financial or time? Claremont researched office-based workers to find out what types of things invite people back to the office. With an overall low occupancy at 30% businesses are feeling the pinch when it comes to workforce presence.

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Nature-Inspired Workplace Design

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Nature-Inspired Workplace Design

Here’s a big question, how do we inspire more people to come back into the workplace? For Steve Brewer, founding partner of the design agency, Burtt-Jones and Brewer, we need to create a workplace EXPERIENCE which works for you as an individual. Having worked with HM Treasury and so many other businesses transforming their workplaces, for Steve the most important part of the conversation is with the individual. Rather than go through a company and blitz a design with a hammer and chisel, for Steve, the keys are workshops. “We benchmark where that company is and where that company wants to go in the future. It’s a very tailored response, and very much we see ourselves as Co-designing workspaces.” The better experience at work, the better the end-result. “The more you can run through that process, the better the foundations you can build.” Steve sees that his role is to pull all the “Jigsaw pieces together and try and make it the best-looking picture that everybody agrees to”.

What about Biophilic Design? For Steve, he has always tried to bring outside experience inside the office. Sometimes, businesses might see biophilic design and plants as a sticky plaster solution. If you think about it the buildings are often already there “glass sealed boxes with air conditioning. Maybe you’ve been on tube, rushed to work, grabbed a coffee, no breakfast, kids were screaming, then you are in the work environment. If we can bring more biophilic design into those spaces, then that experience is going to lift your wellbeing, calm you down by not seeing white walls, glaring light, bad acoustics…”

 

Steve goes on to explore how to introduce Biophilic Design early as you can into the design consultation process, but most importantly being sensitive and understanding how and when to convince stake-holders who might have a thousand other things on their mind when they are sitting around the table.

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Lloyds Bank, Sustainability and Greening Workplaces

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Lloyds Bank, Sustainability and Greening Workplaces

For Paula Rowntree, Head of Workplace Design for LLOYDS BANKING GROUP, the office very much plays an important role in the workplace. For her it is the human connection, the corridor moments, saying hello, being creative, having conversations, seeing when someone is not ok. So when it comes to designing spaces, the focus is very much on the wellbeing of the people using the space, as well as the sustainability aspect, which is why Biophilic Design is such a positive element in a designer’s bag.

 “Biophilia and planting becomes a visible statement” something that says that this company is committed to sustainability.  “Also by putting planting back into the environment in branches, we are helping make people feel a little bit better in the work environment.” The spaces feel good, there’s re-oxygenation, alongside brand messaging. “There is something so joyful, it makes you feel: wow this in an amazing space. We want to make them timeless, make them last, to be there for future generations, because planting does that right, it doesn’t just stop.”

 

 

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New Natural History GCSE – so we are not the Last Page of the Book of Earth

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New Natural History GCSE – so we are not the Last Page of the Book of Earth

With such a depletion of wildlife in the UK alone, with so many schools, cities, towns, and housing estates being built so far removed from our natural world how on earth does the next generation stand a chance to learn about the natural world and be sympathetic to it?

 At the same time, we also are demanding literally the earth from our natural world, and the way we extract from the natural world is getting more intensive and damaging.  As we move further away from it how do we fill that nature gap in society? We speak with Environmentalist, Producer and Writer Mary Colwell who has campaigned and devised a NEW Natural History GCSE designed to help bridge this chasm, helping put nature and the wonderment and fascination of nature into education.

“Nature is for everyone, it is there for YOU to engage with, that’s why putting it into the school system is important, making it open access and free to all, for everyone to engage with. We know from the COPs recently that we are looking at a very difficult time ahead, and those young people will have to live in this difficult time, and if they are going to make the right decisions for themselves, people and the planet, they need to be more knowledgeable, more engaged and more connected to this planet we live on.”

 Read and Listen on…

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Healing yourself at Home with Biophilic Design

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Healing yourself at Home with Biophilic Design

Tying in with the second issue of our magazine, our theme for this podcast is HOME. We speak with Award-winning Interior Designer Nuria Muñoz who tells us about her journey into Biophilic Design and why she decided to follow her dream path start her own company and do something good for the planet.

Nuria is a Wellbeing Interior Designer, Consultant, Speaker and Educator based in Valencia Spain and works all over the world. She founded Habitarmonia, a consulting and design studio that offers both B2B and B2C services, has won awards and is passionate about our beautiful planet, and designs interiors that respect our world and brings harmony and happiness to the families who live in them.

"We heal people by using Biophilic Design." Giving us an example where she transformed a home of a couple who had stressful jobs and children who were struggling on different levels, she explains the importance of co-creation, working with the family, asking them lifestyle questions, finding out their challenges, listening and also, and this is important, explaining HOW the design changes will help them.

"It's important to make people aware of the benefits of biophilic design. We create room and space, but our challenge as interior designers, it's not just about looking saying and showing it looks nice, it is important also to communicate that the Biophilic Design solution helps you with well-being and happiness."

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Designing the Way Nature Would

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Designing the Way Nature Would

Merging nature and design together, Outsidein, as their name suggests, does exactly that, they bring the outside in. They were Platinum winners in this year’s 2022 Biophilic Design Awards with a project they designed for a large litigation firm in New Zealand, where the CEO had given them the specification to bring the experience of the wilds of New Zealand into the office to help give their workforce respite and relief during what is often a pressurised workday. Not only does this give relief, but also it is an amazing space to be in, people want to be there, they are drawn to the area. With the recruitment of the best and most talented staff a challenge in many countries, we might be wise to take a leaf (excuse the intended pun) out of this book.

We sit down with Ryan McQuerry, Creative Director of Outsidein, who dialled in at 5am from New Zealand to speak with us to find out about his journey into greenscaping and discuss how Biophilic Design when incorporated into the built environment and cities transforms lives. From his first forays into his grandpa’s garden in America to starting his first landscaping business at the age of 17, to being inspired by Patrick Blanc and seeing someone hanging off a building installing plants. He and his family live and breathe the biophilic life, their home is in the countryside, where every window has a view of nature, and materials are organic and natural, it’s no wonder that his work, installations and vision for design is sensitive to the beauty and benefits our natural world brings to us. He shares with us how they designed the winning greenscape using a change of temperature, natural light, indigenous plants, local rocks, terrarium concepts and so much more. It is beautiful…

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The Fluid Beauty of Light - Lighting the Workplace

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The Fluid Beauty of Light - Lighting the Workplace

We are diurnal species, we were born under natural light, we have an ingrained ability to imagine and contextualise natural light in our heads. A Biophilic approach to lighting pulls on those cues inwards into the built environment. We spend hours and hours inside, and in the workplace we need spaces that will empower us to do our best work, to flourish, to keep us healthy and as a simple baseline, to also enjoy coming to work. Gary Thornton is speaking at the Workplace Trends “Evolving Ways of Working” conference on 18 October 2022 in London and we catch up with him beforehand to discuss just how should we be applying Biophilic lighting to our Workplaces.

A lot of things in the workplace are static, but what can shift during the day is lighting. It can influence our behaviour, the look and feel of a space, more so than any other discipline. That is one reason why lighting is so important, but is also one of the unsung heroes of a space. Historically, we have lit spaces for paper-based work, instead of considering a great deal of our work is screen-based, so there is a lot of overlighting. In this podcast, Gary outlines a lighting schema that considers first how people use the space, how to enhance not only the horizontal space (desks etc) but also the verticals (the walls which can look drab and dull if not lit properly). He suggests lighting spaces which create an experience, a destination to enhance the wellbeing and also positive perception and feeling of a space.

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Wood - Our Connection to the Forest through Biophilic Design

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Wood - Our Connection to the Forest through Biophilic Design

We often advocate that we should be incorporating wood, views of trees, wood grain, wood textures and wood veneers into our built environment as part of a Biophilic Design solution and we might also understand why from a psychological point of view and have discussed that elsewhere, but the question is HOW should we be selecting woods to incorporate, what woods should we use for instance for flooring, are they different to those used for outside timbers, are they sustainable? This is a definitive podcast on all things wood and trees. We were lucky to speak with Criswell Davis, TED speaker and internationally recognised expert on American Hardwood. He is also co-founder of the Timber and Forestry Foundation, President of Mighty Oaks Consulting and lectures all over the world on Biophilic Design and how we should be incorporating wood into our built environment. In this podcast, he shares with us, his very personal journey, and how a healthcare issue led him first-hand to experience the very big difference Biophilia made to his recovery.

His knowledge of trees, wood, veneers, finishes, biophilic design and sustainable aspect of forestry and the lumber business, was wonderful, and Criswell urges designers to add “the beauty of wood to your artist palette”, and especially please avoid all woods which come from around the world and cannot be certified as legally harvested. There is so much more in this podcast, if you use woods in your practice, this is definitely one to listen to.

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Are you sitting comfortably? ...probably not...!

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Are you sitting comfortably? ...probably not...!

What do you think of when people say "ergonomics"? You, like many others, may think 'comfortable chairs and sit-stand desks', but as Guy Osmond, MD of Osmond Ergonomics explains in this podcast, it is more than that. Incorporating Biophilic Design into workplace solutions, ergonomics covers the physical and mental wellbeing of the individual. The word itself comes from the Ancient Greek "ergon" meaning "work" and "nomos" meaning natural law, so ergonomics is the practice of designing a work environment optimised for the individual so they can be the most attentive, most productive and most comfortable at work.

In this podcast Guy gives us, at 00:13:00, THREE TIPS you can do at home to improve your home working. He also shares information from a NASA study on how and why we should move to trigger your anti-gravity muscles.

Millions of people are still working from their kitchen, with a whole bunch of them suffering from neck, shoulder and back problems, as well as mental health issues. If you have ever heard of the term "Magnetic Office", you will probably know that it is a term referring to the pull of the office. If you want your staff to return to your offices, well, just take a look at their design. Can they can work comfortably? Are you considering the well-being management of your workforce? Up your game and think of the bigger picture, and remember the key takeaway from this podcast: the mental and physical health of your staff are interconnected.

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A Woodland Habitat in the City?

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A Woodland Habitat in the City?

How can we encourage more local greening? Where does Biophilic Design fit in the climate change picture? What can we learn from Paris and its free and equitable access to fountains and water? These and other questions are discussed in this great interview with Ross O’Ceallaigh, founder of the Green Urbanist podcast.

With much of the world experiencing unprecedented heat waves this summer, we need to accelerate how we bring Climate Adaptation into our behaviours and city infrastructures. Ross is an urban designer and planner and calls for architects and fellow designers to refocus our aims to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Local greening could be a key solution, but, he says, we need to reduce the bureaucratic barriers that stop communities from planting trees and greening their spaces, the whole process needs to be streamlined to make it really easy.

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Plants @ Work…and Home… and in every room

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Plants @ Work…and Home… and in every room

As National Plants at Work week comes to a close, we celebrate all things plants in this great interview with ambassador and passionate interior and exterior planting designer, Ian Drummond. Plants at Work week takes place once a year, and aims to promote the many benefits of having plants in the workplace and in the past the designers for Plants at Work week have decorated all kinds of things from a Thames Clipper to a London black cab.

In this really passionate interview, be inspired and learn which plants are good where, why we need plants at every stage of our lives. Ian has worked with so many really interesting people, including Elton John, Chelsea Flower Show, BAFTA, London Fashion Week, I left the interview feeling ‘what a cool job he’s got’. Seriously, if you are thinking of working with plants, have a listen to this podcast or share with someone who is considering a career in plants, you’ll definitely leave the podcast impassioned too.

Ian started his passion for plants at a young age. He grew up in a council estate surrounded by concrete. One of his family gave him a house plant and it grew from there. One of the most powerful things he said, was how wonderful it would be if there was an opportunity for everyone to have living nature around them, if all communal spaces had a green oasis for everyone to spend time in. You don’t need a big investment, we need to open up our minds as to what’s important, developers and architects need to consider “green”. Not everyone can get outside, so bring the outside in, let’s fill schools, classrooms with plants. It should be an automatic thing, we should grow up surrounded by plants.

He shares with us how we can create “shelfies”, why Vanda Orchids are terrific, why we need Monsteras and how Zamioculcas are hard to kill! So some tips there for newbies to planting! His new book “At Home with Plants” shares ideas for what to plant in every room in the house. As he says, and I agree (!), every room should have plants!

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Sustainable Habitats for Sustainable Habits?

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Sustainable Habitats for Sustainable Habits?

When you climb up a tree, don’t we see life from a different perspective? We realise we part of something bigger than ourselves, we see an overview of everything and it helps us understand our place in the world more. It is also true, that generally many people and businesses seem to have a distorted relationship with nature, but as Environmental Psychologist and Design professional Anicee Bauer of “Humans in Trees” puts it: “we are nature”. Can Biophilic Design really encourage a more sustainable lifestyle, and why should the Workplace include Biophilic Design in order to help reach that NetZero target?

In this podcast, she shares with us the three fascinating levels in her consultancy process. We touch on Wabi-Sabi design strategies, Aristotelian intellectual moral virtues, spirituality, reconnecting with the fun we feel in nature and Einstein… come join us…

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