Light, Sound and Movement

Flooding a space with natural light (minimizing glare with blinds as needed during certain times of the day, as needed) is biophilic design at its finest; it elevates our mood as well as our ability to learn and our cognitive performance (and you get bonus mood and performance points if the windows admitting that natural light can be opened to temperate breezes of clean, not polluted, air).  So is making a sleeping space as dark as is reasonably possible at night.  Using different colours and intensities of light at different times of the day and in different sorts of fixtures is another way to design biophilically.  We wake up and fall asleep in the best possible sorts of ways, when we’re experiencing relatively dim and warm light (this is also the sort of lighting when we collaborate, interact, with others best) and during the day we flourish in cooler brighter light (this light is great for concentrating and alertness, also).  To get the biggest impact, that warm light should be relatively low on our visual horizon, just like the sun is at the beginning and end of the day, in tabletop and floor lamps.  Just like the sun in the sky at midday, it’s best if the cooler light comes from overhead fixtures.  We also find it particularly relaxing if the light that hits the floor around us is dappled, just like sunbeams passing through a tree overhead and hitting the ground around where we’re sitting would be.

We continue to find the sounds of a fine weather Spring day on a meadow relaxing, whether they come from a softly playing recording, a desktop fountain or some other source.  The sorts of sounds that have this power over us come from burbling brooks, gently singing birds, and gently rustling leaves and grasses, for example.

We’re quite particular about the sorts of furniture arrangements where we feel most comfortable today, and, not surprisingly, they are the ones that would have kept us alive long ago.  We prefer to sleep in a place where we have a view of the door to the room where we’re dozing but in which we’re hidden from view by the door to that room as it opens—all this means that we know that the door is opening before whomever is doing the opening can see us—we have a few nanoseconds to plan and act if we need to.

We also prefer to be in a place that has, what’s known in the psych-biz, as prospect and also refuge.  That means we feel that we’re safe and have a view out over the world around us.  We get this feeling when we’re in a high-backed chair in a living room when we can easily see the rest of the room, when we’re in a restaurant booth where the seat backs are tall and we have a view of the entrance to the restaurant, when we’re in an alcove tucked into a hallway where we can see all passers-by as we talk to a chum, when we’re in an area of a room with a lower ceiling that’s beside an area with a much higher one—the point is we want to feel that our back is protected, that nothing will sneak up on us from behind, and where we can see whatever is happening around us, whether it actually seems to concern us or not. Having sight lines into neighbouring spaces, like other rooms, is a real bonus biophilic design-wise.  Like a chipmunk, the primitive core of our minds is concerned about being attacked from the rear or surprised by anything else with which we might share our existence.

In biophilically designed spaces, the passage of time is clear not only because light colour and intensity changes from one part of a day to another but also because on a longer scale, materials in use, such as copper and leather, develop a patina.

Biophilically designed spaces also have elements that move gently, like grasses in a slight breeze on a Spring day.  What’s moving might be curtains or a mobile that move in a peaceful heating or air conditioning current, for example. It might also be the water and fish in an aquarium—which may explain why it’s so relaxing to look at fish tanks (which is why every dentist’s office seems to put one front and centre in its waiting room).