Nature Inside

A biophilic design guide

William D. Browning, Catherine O. Ryan

• Publisher: RIBA Publishing
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000051315
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arquitectura
• Subtopic: Arquitectura general

Written by a leading proponent of biophilic design, this is the only practical guide to biophilic design principles for interior designers. Describing the key benefits, principles and processes of biophilic design, Nature Inside illustrates the implementation of biophilic design in interior design practice, across a range of international case studies – at different scales, and different typologies. Starting with the principles of biophilic design, and the principles and processes in practice, the book then showcases a variety of interior spaces – residential, retail, workplace, hospitality, education, healthcare and manufacturing. The final chapter looks 'outside the walls', giving a case study at the campus and city scale. With practical guidance and real-world solutions that can be directly-applied in day-to-day practice, this is a must-have for designers interested in applying biophilic principles.

FIGURE 1.1 LAN SU CHINESE GARDEN, PORTLAND, OREGON, USA, 2000. Aviewto nature stimulates a particularly strong response in the visual cortex of the brain.

CHAPTER 1
THE SCIENTIFIC AND BUSINESS CASE FOR BIOPHILIC DESIGN

Biophília is not a single instinct but a complex of learning rules that can be teased apart and analyzed individually. The feelings molded by the learning rules fall along several emotional spectra: from attraction to aversion, from awe to indifference, from peacefulness to fear-driven anxiety.¹

Intuition tells us that being in nature makes us happier. However, the intuitively obvious usually needs scientific and financial evidence to convince clients to make the investment in biophilic design.

SCIENCE CASE

HEALING AND STRESS REDUCTION

American professor Roger Ulrich led one of the earliest and best known studies into health-related outcomes and biophilia.² Patients recovering from gall bladder surgery were placed in rooms along one side of a building. Half of the rooms had a view to a brick wall; the others had a view to some trees and shrubs. The patients were matched by demographics and paint colour of the room, with the view as the remaining variable. The patients with the view to the brick wall took an average of 8.7 days to recover, while the patients with a view to the trees took an average of 7.9 days. The patients with a view to the trees had far fewer nursing calls and took fewer painkillers. This study is one of the first examples of evidence-based design and helped to launch the healing garden movement in hospital design.

In subsequent studies with cardiac patients in Sweden, Ulrich and his team showed patients either images of nature or blank sheets of paper, before or after heart surgery. They found that patients who viewed the nature images pre- or post-surgery had lower blood pressure, lower heart rate and improved recovery times than patients who viewed the blank sheets of paper.³

In a similar study,⁴ psychologist Peter Kahn and colleagues found that a video screen showing images of nature would lower blood pressure, lower heart rate and have positive psychological benefits for workers in a windowless space. This led Kahn to ask whether seeing simulated nature was equivalent to seeing real nature. In a study at the University of Washington,⁵ participants were given a stressor, and then during the recovery task had one of three views: a wall of plain curtains; the same wall with a portion of the curtains open to reveal a view out of a window to a fountain, flowers and trees; or portions of the curtains open to reveal a high-definition flat screen television of the same dimensions and aspect ratio as the window showing in real time the view out of the window. While the view of just the curtains was not particularly helpful to the recovery process, the view out of the window and the view of the flat screen elicited similar positive psychological responses. The view shown on the flat screen television lowered blood pressure and heart rate, but not as much as the view out of the real window. Optical scientist Alan Lewis, in a 2012 personal discussion with the authors, believes that this difference in response is due to parallax from binocular vision of spatial experiences. When viewing a scene in real space, moving the head just a few millimetres changes the view, as the overlap of images from the two eyes changes. Even the best high-definition flat screen televisions cannot yet replicate parallax — the image is the same from every viewing angle.

How the brain processes experiences of nature is quite interesting. As images trigger responses in the rods and cones on the retina of the human eye, they are transmitted by the optical nerve to the visual cortex of the brain. This funnel-shaped portion of the brain does the initial processing before the images move to different parts of the brain for interpretation. As an image travels further into the funnel the cross-section of the visual cortex increases and more neurons are triggered, in particular mu opioid receptors, which leads to a more pleasurable response. Irving Biederman and Edward Vessel investigated how images of varying complexity within the built environment were processed in the visual cortex. More complex images travelled further into the funnel-shaped cortex. In the Biederman-Vessel study,⁶ an image of a plain grey wall was processed at the start of the funnel, while images of a pile of bricks and a lamp post beside a building were each processed further into the cortex. Finally an image of a rolling Japanese garden with water made it furthest into the cortex, triggering the strongest pleasure response of all

FIGURE 1.2 BARON KARL VON HASENAUER AND GOTTFRIED SEMPER, KUNSTHISTORISCHES MUSEUM, VIENNA, AUSTRIA, 1891. Ornamentation with a moderate degree of complexity can capture gaze attention and interest.

(Figure 1.1). The Japanese garden was also the only one of these images that did not elicit rapidly diminishing responses upon repeat viewing.

Using gaze attention tracking devices, it is possible to determine which elements of an view or location most capture our interest. Because of the relatively small area of vision that can be processed by the brain, the eyes dart around to produce a larger image, fixating briefly on some things and moving across others. A human face will get our attention first, typically followed by other living things. In the built environment, after person or animal, decorative detailing will attract our attention more than a blank wall (Figure 1.2).⁷ This indicates that ornamentation in architecture may make for more interesting design, and in traditional design that ornamentation would frequently be derived from nature.

The brain subconsciously sorts between living and human-made or mechanical motion. Work by neuroscientist Michael Beauchamp and others⁸ found that videos of a hand saw moving back and forth were processed in a part of the brain that deals with non-living objects while videos of a person moving back and forth in a similar motion as the hand saw were processed in a part of the brain that is associated with living things. Acknowledging that participants are undoubtedly aware that a saw is not alive and a moving person is alive, the experiment was repeated using videos of only motion capture dots on the saw and the person. Without knowing which object generated the motion, the brain processed the correct motions into areas dealing with either living or non-living. Non-living motion, like a pendulum, is repetitive, predictable and easily disregarded; whereas, living motion is less so, and thus more effective at capturing attention and offering visual respite.

While vision is the primary sense for most humans, and accounts for much of the brain's sensory capacity we also experience nature through scent, sound, touch, taste, temperature, pressure, balance, distance and more.

The context or combination of senses can determine how some experiences are interpreted. For example, there are times when the sound frequency of highway traffic is very similar to that of waves on a beach. In a study of comparison, a new sound was generated by averaging the two sounds, and then played while showing either an image of waves on a beach or a highway filled with traffic. While the sound was the same, where it was processed in the brain depended on the image. Although the same sound was heard the outcomes differed: when heard with the beach image as context, the sound was processed in the part of the brain that tends to deal with living things and was reported as being a positive experience. When heard with the highway image as context, the sound was both processed in the part of the brain that tends to deal with human-made things and reported as being a neutral or negative experience.⁹

In Japan and Korea, research has been conducted to gauge the effect of walking or sitting in a forest as opposed to walking or sitting on an urban street. The time in the forest led to lower measurements of blood pressure, heart rate and the Cortisol stress hormone. Cortisol levels also reportedly stayed lower for extended periods after the 'forest bathing' experience.^{10 11} Many of the walks occurred in Hinoki cypress plantations, where there are significant phytoncides, or essential oils, in the air. There is evidence of positive changes in the immune system response after these experiences.¹²

Research also indicates that some scents might directly influence brain stress response. Mice exposed to the smell of linalool, one of the components of the smell of lavender, experienced a calming response. The scent appeared to trigger some of the same neurons that are activated by Valium, but without the motor impairment.¹³ Mice have similar neural pathways to humans. This presents another potential way in which nature can help with stress reduction.

COGNITIVE RESPONSE

Much of the research on biophilia has focused on stress reduction as measured through heart rate, blood pressure, Cortisol levels and psychological response. Another thread of research has focused on the cognitive response. As far back as the 1800s there was a theory that the brain operates differently while experiencing nature.¹⁴ It was thought that when out in nature, the brain operates on a level of 'soft fascination'. This eventually became the basis for attention restoration theory (ART),^{15 16} which posited that portions of the prefrontal cortex quiet down while experiencing nature. After this mental pause, we have better cognitive capacity.

FIGURE 1.3 COOKFOX ARCHITECTS, COOKFOX SIXTH AVENUE STUDIO, NEW YORK CITY, USA, 2014. A nature-rich view helps to restore cognitive capacity.

A recent confirmation of the ART theory came in an experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measurement to observe brain activity. After a stressor, participants viewed either an image of an asphalt rooftop, or the same image with flowers on the rooftop. Within 40 seconds of viewing the image of the rooftop with flowers, the prefrontal cortex decreased activity and subsequently the participants performed better on the recovery task (Figure 1.3).¹⁷

There is also evidence that the presence of nature may help the rate of cognitive development among school-age children. A study of 2593 children in Grades 2-4 in Spain's Barcelona school syste...