BIOPHILIA
Critical to the success of your workplace design, Biophilia is a Wellbeing Principle©. Biophilia principles are critical processes & need to be applied to your project. It’s not a ‘not nice to have’ – it’s a must have. Without a strategy being implemented at the beginning of the design stage, your new workplace project could be a total fail.
Biophilia - It's Not Just Plants!
Biophilia is crucial in the workplace. Biophilia includes aspects such as the shape of things (for example non-linear/ organic shapes) fresh airflow and how it interacts with surroundings (for example a vent blowing on a plant emulates wind outdoors), selection of materials that are natural, or appear natural, like plants (biophilia is often associated just with plants, but it is a lot more than this. See article Biophilia- The Architecture of Life for more information), greenery, products like timbers (real or artificial – your body responds to the fact you can see naturally occurring textures) & stone. These materials trigger physiological responses within us which make us more productive, happier & enable us to produce at a greater level. An interesting study done on the impact of biophilia on the human body & brain (mentioned in the article in greater detail) was in a hospital, where they had one patient room that looked out on a brick wall, and another one identical which looked out on a little scrubby garden. Time after time, the patient that was in the room that had the greenery to see, not an amazing garden but a few scrubby bushes, recovered faster, had less nurse calls & required less pain killers consistently when compared with a patient with a similar illness in the other room. This demonstrates how simple tweaks within a great design can have a powerful impact on our physiological responses, and therefore our output, which is critical to a successful workplace.