Biophilic design is growing!

Biophilic design uses the same design principles indoors that we’d find in an outdoor space where we feel very comfortable.  In a workplace design study utilising biophilic design elements such as plants, water (a fish tank), natural materials, curvy shapes, and nature views, among others, Yin and colleagues found in a study done via virtual reality that “participants in biophilic indoor environments had consistently better recovery responses after thinking stressful thoughts compared to those in the non-biophilic environment, in terms of reduction on stress and anxiety.” Physiological measures signalling stress moved towards lower stress levels in the first 4 minutes of the stress recovery period. Also: “In the stressor period, participants were exposed to a virtual office with untidy conditions and background noises from traffic, machinery and household appliances. They were instructed to finish two stress induction tasks (i.e. memory task and arithmetic task).”

Jie Yin, Jing Yuan, Nastaran Arfaei, Paul Catalano, Joseph Allen, and John Spengler.  2020.  “Effects of Biophilic Indoor Environment on Stress and Anxiety Recovery:  A Between-Subjects Experiment in Virtual Reality.”  Environment International, vol. 136, 105427, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2019.105427