Health and wellness is an increasingly important aspect of housing design, not only for the obvious reasons, but also because consumers have a better understanding of the impact of their living environments and are demanding healthier places. One way to incorporate wellness benefits is by using biophilia. Here is an exploration of the trend.
Despite the many conveniences and advantages of modern life, wellbeing and contentment continue to evade many of us. The cure may be in an architectural concept that sounds new but is as old as the hills. Take a dose of biophilia and read how your home's design can help you live a healthier, less stressful life.
The tale of a tiger
Tony the Siberian-Bengal tiger was an attraction at a truck stop in Louisiana, USA until recently, when his life – lived out in a cage outside the petrol station – was cut short due to illness. The tiger spent most of his 17 years in the fume-filled artificial habitat, but had his owner known more about the links between an animal's surroundings and its health and happiness, Tony's story may have ended differently.
Is there a lesson humans can take from Tony's fate? Deprived of sensory stimuli, social bonds and connection with nature in our homes and workplaces, we may be heading down the same path. Biophilic design is being advanced as the next important focus in architecture and as a remedy, partly, for the plethora of modern-day conditions linked to fatigue and stress.
What is biophilic design?
Biophilia literally translates as 'love of life'. In the 1980s, American biologist E. O. Wilson proposed that evolution has soft-wired us to prefer natural settings over built environments. In Wilson's words, we have "an innate and genetically determined affinity … with the natural world". Exponents of biophilic design are attempting to address this instinct architecturally.
