William D. Browning - Nature Inside

Thomas Heatherwick

HEATHERWICK STUDIO, ZEITZ MOCAA, CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA, 2017. To repurpose a decommissioned grading tower and silos as the Museum of Contemporary African Art (MOCAA), cutbacks to the concrete silos resulted in an awe-inspiring biomorphic form for the central atrium. On the upper levels of the tower, fractal window patterns impact perceptions of time and movement, reflecting a diurnal kaleidoscope of textures and colours a highly biophilic experience without the presence of living vegetation.

BY THOMAS HEATHERWICK

Biophilia is a weird word. I had noticed it being used, but had got away with ignoring it until one day one of my studios collaborators wrote it into the brief for a project.

Initially, I had assumed that biophilia was just a pretentious and over-complicated way to express the simple and obvious point that plants are generally pretty good. But when I started properly looking into it, I learnt that this word is about much more than this it delves deeper into ourselves and the science of our emotional responses to the world. I was fascinated, while simultaneously being embarrassed at myself for having previously dismissed it.

One of the reasons I originally set up my studio to design buildings and spaces was that I had felt that the emotional impact of new buildings in cities was being comprehensively overlooked, in favour of the cerebral, conceptual and mundane. The new buildings I was seeing, made from glass, metal and concrete, were technically amazing bigger, taller and shinier than anything in history. But how did they make us feel? What did they do for us emotionally? The neglect of this dimension seemed to urgently need addressing.

As my own studios projects grew from objects to buildings to entire pieces of city, I had found myself instinctively looking to nature and its lessons to create a counterpoint to the hard, monotonous environment that I had experienced around me growing up in 1970s London. These large new boxes that surrounded me as a child were frequently devoid, not just of greenery and nature, but of anything that might make me feel connected, curious or interested in what happened inside them.

As a counterpoint to the boring-ness, my team and I started gravitating towards the use of more natural materials that age and patinate over time and the use of plants, trees and organic forms as a way to create places that felt softer, kinder and more human in scale. We werent sure of any science, but we were sure that the integration of a more natural approach to place-making created places that gave people a feeling of more balance and harmony.

In an age where mental health and well-being are becoming widespread problems that many of us encounter in our lives, it is now clearer than ever that, to design better buildings, society needs to reconnect with its own instinctive and emotional sensibilities. And nature can be an amazing teacher.

For the last century, the practice of architecture has been dominated by the cerebral, academic and theoretical, without a sucfficient balancing factor of instinctive and emotionally intelligent thinking about how structures and spaces make us feel. Biophilia, for me, is one potential form of antidote. Its interesting because it is much broader than just being about the love of plants or the obvious benefits of greenery (). It touches every aspect of design: whether we can see the sky change from within a room, or how we perceive sounds and movement, like the twitch of leaves or gentle noises of moving water. In our studio, we have become passionate about making places that people can feel an emotional connection with. Were clearer than ever that nature provides many of the clues to creating places that can be more alive.

Nature has infinite lessons for designers. Water and grasses can give a place vitality and the movement of a garden can provide a poetic contrast to the rigidity of a building. Im equally fascinated by imperfection by the ever-so-slight differences that give authenticity to texture; wood that shows its grain; materials that can be repaired and mature as they age. Nature has rhythms and patterns; it is complex and beautiful and always interesting. Why must everything be perfectly smooth and aligned? Whats wrong with rough, raw and real?

A book dedicated to exploring biophilic design is something to celebrate and Im delighted to be able to contribute. There is a growing body of evidence to support a way of working I had thought was simply intuitive and principles that can now be advocated for more objectively. To create meaningful places that will endure, designers need to consider their emotional response to place, which goes beyond the old-fashioned conception of rational, linear thinking. The concept of biophilia is a brilliant way to frame a set of issues that I believe are critical to the design of the environments around us where nature is not just a prop to achieve another aim but instead, the overall objective should be a more natural world.

SAVANNAH LANDSCAPE, SERENGETI, TANZANIA. With a prospect view across a sloping landscape, a tree canopy for refuge from the sun, and sometimes a water body and evidence human habitation, the savannah landscape is the quintessential biophilic environment.)

WHAT IS BIOPHILIA AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR BUILDINGS AND SPACES?

An underlying premise of incorporating nature into the built environment is that when people are regularly in contact with nature, personal health and wellbeing will improve in a manner and to a degree that contributes meaningfully to public health, community resilience and environmental stewardship.