Journal of Biophilic Design

There are many places where we can feel an overwhelm, for some of us, the overwhelm can be, well, overwhelming and trying to find somewhere to recalibrate can be difficult.

So how can design help us feel safe, connected and able to participate in the world? Designer and interdisciplinary artist Freyja Sewell begins with nature, sensory experience and a willingness to imagine things differently.

As a neurodivergent designer herself, Freyja is founder of HUUS Design, where she brings together art, technology, nature and sensory design to create gorgeous woven soft felt pods and other products including digital capability to help create environments that support human experience better. Her work is also woven by an ambition to make positive futures tangible.

From lived experience to inclusive design

Freyja’s journey began with her own experience of feeling overwhelmed by certain environments. As an autistic designer, she understands how noise, stimulation and a lack of privacy can make everyday spaces difficult to navigate.

Rather than treating this sensitivity as a limitation, she has increasingly come to recognise how it can inform her creativity. That perspective led to the development of the HushPod, a freestanding, closable felt structure that creates a small, private retreat within a larger environment. Developed after university, the original concept emerged from her need to find somewhere peaceful to go when the world became too much.

Freyja experimented with different materials before discovering thick wool felt. Its combination of strength, softness and tactility offered the qualities she was seeking, namely a beautiful object that could provide both physical enclosure and a sense of calm. Inspired partly by the womb-like quality of the form, the HushPod offered an alternative to retreating to a toilet (which a lot of people do!) or withdrawing entirely from public life! The response from others was also positive. People recognised their own need for quiet, privacy and space to regulate their emotions and senses. A personal design solution had revealed a much wider need.

Bringing the forest into our everyday spaces

Nature has been a constant source of inspiration for Sewell, and biophilic research and principles now underpin both her artistic and design practice.

She describes the forest as a genuinely immersive experience. The sensation of walking on the ground, the smells, the sounds, the air and the textures all contribute to an encounter that engages the whole body.

Yet not everyone can easily access these experiences. Physical barriers, socioeconomic circumstances and the realities of urban life can all limit opportunities to spend time in nature. Her approach seeks to distil some of nature’s qualities into environments to meet people where they are.

Through sensory spaces, including an art therapy pod developed in collaboration with Ebony Easley, she explores how design can bring elements of nature into settings where people may need additional support. These spaces can offer an introduction to nature’s restorative qualities, while encouraging a deeper connection with the living world beyond their walls.

A different vision of the future

Freyja’s thinking is also shaped by her experiences in Japan, where she has lived three times. She is fascinated by approaches that understand nature and technology as interconnected rather than opposing forces. For her, a positive future is one in which these relationships become reciprocal: technology exists in ways that support a healthier balance between people and the natural world.

This vision depends on creativity and diverse ways of thinking. Repeating familiar approaches, she suggests, is unlikely to produce fundamentally different outcomes. That makes neurodiversity an important part of the conversation about the future of design.

Making room for everyone

Where would she like to see her designs make the greatest difference? In restaurants and bars, where quieter retreats could help neurodivergent people participate more comfortably in social life; in educational settings, where young people could find opportunities to regulate and contribute; and in hospitals, where patients, families and staff may need moments of calm amid stressful surroundings; and environments in which more people feel able to belong.

Perhaps that is one of the most important lessons biophilic design can offer, noteably designing for wellbeing means looking beyond how a space appears to consider how it feels to inhabit it.

By listening to different experiences of the world, embracing sensory diversity and drawing inspiration from nature, we can begin to imagine places that work for more of us.

Explore further: Discover the Journal of Biophilic Design’s Neurodiversity Issue, featuring research, science and inspiration for creating spaces that work for everyone.

To learn more about Biophilic Design and how it can help support neuroinclusivity, download you own copy: https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/shop/journal-of-biophilic-design-issue-9-neurodiversity-ebook-version

To learn more about Freyja’s work visit: https://www.freyjasewell.co.uk

Neurodivergent, neurodiversity and neurotypical: a guide to the terms

 https://www.thebraincharity.org.uk/neurodivergent-neurodiversity-neurotypical-explained/

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The Glasshouse is using horticulture, employment and a deep connection with nature to give women leaving prison something they often desperately need: dignity, confidence and the chance to build a different future. I am joined by co-founder Kali Hamerton-Stove alongside Ri, who came through the programme herself and now works on the senior team.

A plant needs the right conditions, nourishment, care, light and time. Give it those things and given the opportunity, it grows. For Kali Hamerton-Stove, co-founder of The Glasshouse, this has become the foundation of an extraordinary social enterprise supporting women approaching the end of their prison sentences.

The Glasshouse began with disused greenhouses at HMP East Sutton Park, an open women's prison in Kent. Kali's friend Melissa had visited the prison and was struck by how difficult life could be for women approaching release. Finding safe housing and employment was a huge challenge, while the stigma attached to having been in prison created another barrier to rebuilding a life.

The unused greenhouses suggested a possibility. Could they become somewhere women could learn horticultural skills, gain work experience and begin to imagine life beyond custody? Kali, whose own background is rooted in horticulture and a lifelong relationship with plants, helped develop the idea into a business plan. The proposal was put to the Ministry of Justice in 2020, and within around six weeks the first cohort of women was working with the Glasshouse.

The organisation has since developed into a commercial social enterprise, growing and nurturing houseplants and providing interior landscaping and plant maintenance for corporate clients. Women receive horticultural training and experience while still in custody, and the Glasshouse continues to support them after release with employment and the transition back into society.

But the story of the Glasshouse is about much more than horticulture. It is about what happens when someone is given the conditions in which they can rediscover their own value. Ri knows this from experience. She joined the Glasshouse programme while she was in custody, initially coming out on day release to work either in the shop or at the growing facility. It was in the growing facility that she says she "found her feet". Her explanation of why is particularly revealing.

"When women find themselves in custody," she explained, "I think what we lose is dignity, privacy and value." In the growing facility, something changed. She could work alone. She could care for plants that needed her. She could organise them, nurture them and watch them grow. The plants gave her a sense that she was needed, and therefore that she had value. "I could be alone there, so I could be brave enough to allow certain thoughts to come to the forefront that I might not be able to do whilst in custody," she said.

And yet she was not really alone. "Although I was alone, I was surrounded by plants, so I had company." It is difficult to think of a more succinct description of the human value of nature connection. Ri went on to explain that the Glasshouse invests in the woman rather than simply assessing the skills she already possesses. The organisation does not assume that a woman's previous life tells you what she is capable of becoming.

Through the work, Ri discovered transferable skills she had never recognised in herself. She gained a City & Guilds qualification in horticulture and eventually moved from participant to employee. She has now worked with the Glasshouse for more than two and a half years after release. Her journey is not presented as a neat transformation in which prison is followed by an uncomplicated new life. Ri is candid that coming out of custody was difficult. Having choices again was challenging. But she had something many women leaving prison do not: continuity, a workplace, people who understood what she had experienced, and the opportunity to develop her skills within an environment where she was already known.

That experience now enables her to support other women coming through the programme. The most moving part of our conversation came when Ri described how her relationship with nature itself had changed. In custody, she explained, women can be almost completely removed from the natural world. Some may spend as much as 23 and a half hours a day in their cells. Exercise yards can be concrete spaces surrounded by razor wire. Some women may not even be able to see the sky from their rooms.

Then comes The Glasshouse. Suddenly there are plants. Soil. Growing things. Trees. Green. "I see green differently," Ri told me. "I also see trees differently." Then she said something that was really touching, and it is something that underpins the principle flowing through biophilia: "I know that I'm held by it." Held by nature.

She described knowing that on a difficult day, during a difficult hour, or even during five difficult minutes, nature holds her. For someone who has experienced confinement, that word takes on an extraordinary significance.

The Glasshouse does not treat horticulture as an activity added around rehabilitation, it is woven into the rehabilitation itself. Kali describes watching women arrive uncertainly, sometimes saying that they have no idea what they are doing. Gradually, something changes as they spend time surrounded by greenery and learn how to care for plants.

Ri has found her own language for explaining why.

"When we make compost, we're handling grit," she said. "And we've got grit."

There is humour in the observation, but also something much deeper. A plant placed in the right environment, given its basic needs, can flourish.

"So why can't we do that with people?" Ri asked. "All we're asking is just to be put in the right environment... and just be given basic needs. We're not talking about luxuries. And then there's no reason that we can't flourish."

It is an important way of thinking about rehabilitation.

The Glasshouse is not lowering expectations for the women it supports. Quite the opposite. It gives them real work, real responsibility and real professional expectations. Women learn to prepare CVs, attend interviews and develop skills they will need after release. The aim is to create an environment in which women actually experience working.

And the women themselves have helped shape the organisation. Kali says the programme has been guided and developed by the women who have participated in it, creating a commercial enterprise built with their experience at its centre.

From prison greenhouse to Chelsea

That professional identity became particularly visible when the Glasshouse took its work to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. The women were not there just as a social enterprise receiving sympathetic attention. The distinction mattered enormously to Ri:

"We went to Chelsea as horticulturalists," she said. "And that is phenomenal."

The Glasshouse has participated at Chelsea for two years. Its first project recreated the atmosphere of the prison greenhouses where the women had begun their horticultural journey. The women helped create the environment, and the project received a Gold medal. Ri was instrumental in developing and delivering the design. The experience gave the women something that is rarely associated with prison rehabilitation: professional pride.

They can now walk into a grey corporate environment and transform it with plants. They can install and maintain thousands of plants. They can travel into London to work. They can receive praise from clients for the quality of what they had created.

"Commuting into London gives you your dignity back," Ri explained. The words are striking because dignity is so often discussed as an abstract principle. Here, it is something tangible: putting on work clothes, travelling to work, doing a job well, being trusted, being paid, being part of a professional team. Being at Chelsea as professional horticulturalists represented a profound change in identity.

A different way of seeing nature

Kali grew up surrounded by gardens and indoor plants. Her father was a master gardener in America, while her mother cared for the indoor garden. She says she did not fully recognise the benefits of that relationship with nature until it was absent. The Glasshouse has made that understanding something she can share with women who may have had very different experiences of the natural world.

The women learn about propagation and plant care, but also visit gardens and meet experts. They learn about rewilding, landscape design and the wider role of nature. Kali wants them to leave with a different understanding of their relationship with growing things and of their own ability to participate in the natural world.

There is another dimension, too.

Many of the women are mothers. Kali believes that having something to nurture matters. To care for something living, to see that it depends on you and responds to your care, can restore a sense of purpose and agency. The language of horticulture becomes a language for rebuilding a life. Roots. Growth. Resilience. Care. Conditions. Time.

None of this suggests that rehabilitation is simple. The Glasshouse does not pretend that every problem disappears when someone puts their hands into soil. What it demonstrates is something more practical and more hopeful: environment matters.

People need somewhere safe to begin again. They need meaningful work. They need relationships. They need skills. They need to feel useful. They need to be trusted with responsibility. And they need opportunities to discover capacities within themselves that may have been hidden for years.

Ri now helps provide those things for other women. She understands the uncertainty because she has lived it. She understands the plants because she has learned to grow them. And she understands something about nature that she did not know before custody. She sees green differently. At the end of our conversation, Ri offered a sentence that captures the Glasshouse better like a mission statement we all could learn from: "When you're around so much soil, you can't help but grow."

That is exactly what the Glasshouse is creating, it is not a place where women are told they can become different people, but an environment where they can discover that they already contain the capacity to grow. Sometimes, the most important thing we can do for another human being is provide the right conditions.

The Glasshouse is a social enterprise using horticulture, training and employment to support women approaching the end of their prison sentences and after release. Its work demonstrates the profound relationship between nature, dignity, purpose and rehabilitation.

To find out more about the Glasshouse visit: https://www.theglasshouse.co.uk

What is Biophilic Design? https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/what-is-biophilic-design

Want a free copy of the Journal? Visit: https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/free-materials-issue

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Our bodies evolved under changing natural light. So what happens when we spend our lives beneath a ceiling of artificial illumination? Dr Shelley James, known as the Light Lady, explains why light may be one of the most important — and overlooked — elements of biophilic design.

We often talk about biophilic design in terms of plants, timber, water, natural materials and views of nature. But there is another fundamental element of the natural world that is so pervasive we can easily overlook it: light.

Dr Shelley James, founder of Age of Light Innovations, lighting consultant, educator and advocate for healthier environments, believes we need to rethink our relationship with it. Her message is both simple and profound: light isn't merely something that allows us to see. It is information. Our bodies are constantly reading it, interpreting it and responding to it.

“Every cell in your body is responding to light one way or another.”

Light is one of the strongest signals our bodies receive about what time it is. Deep within the brain, the body's internal clock uses light and darkness to coordinate a remarkable sequence of physiological processes — from alertness and appetite to heart rate, hormones, blood chemistry, muscle function and sleep.

Our internal clocks are not perfectly 24 hours. Left without environmental cues, they tend to drift. Natural daylight — changing in intensity, colour and spectrum from dawn through midday to dusk — continually resets that internal timing system.

This is where biophilic design has an extraordinary opportunity.

We evolved with changing light

Natural light is not static. Morning light is different from midday light, which is different again from the low, warm light of evening. Yet much of the built environment gives us something remarkably unlike this: a uniform ceiling of artificial light that may remain essentially unchanged from morning until night.

And the consequences go far beyond aesthetics.

Shelley explains that the eye is effectively an extension of the brain, and that processing visual information is energetically expensive. The visual system is constantly working out what something is, where it is, whether it matters and whether we need to respond.

There is also another pathway through the eye, involving specialised cells containing the light-sensitive protein melanopsin. These cells are particularly responsive to blue wavelengths associated with the sky and help regulate the body's non-visual responses to light — including the circadian system, mood, attention and pupil response.

In other words, we don't simply see light. Our bodies use it to understand the world around us.

Think beyond brightness

For designers, this means that specifying light cannot simply be a question of achieving the required number of lux.

Shelley argues for the right quality of light, in the right place, for the right person, at the right time.

That means thinking about daylight first: how can it be brought deeper into a building, reflected from surfaces or borrowed from adjacent spaces? It means considering the quality of artificial light too — including its colour rendering, spectrum, flicker and distribution.

Colour temperature is measured in Kelvin. A higher Kelvin value produces a cooler-looking light: around 6,500K appears much closer to a cool daylight sky, while 2,700K is warm and associated more closely with evening.

But Shelley makes an important distinction: colour temperature is not the same as colour rendering.

A 6,500K 'daylight' lamp can still render colours poorly. High-quality light should reproduce the spectrum of daylight as closely as possible, allowing materials, skin tones and colours to appear naturally.

This matters particularly in healthcare, where poor-quality light can make people appear unnaturally green or grey, but it matters everywhere. If our environments are telling our brains that something is wrong or unfamiliar, we are asking them to work harder than necessary.

Light can help the body put the bins out

Perhaps Shelley's most memorable analogy is the idea of the body needing to “take the bins out.”

Our bodies accumulate biological by-products throughout the day. Sleep is not simply switching off: it is a period of restoration and maintenance. Adenosine builds up with activity, creating what Shelley describes as a kind of pressure for sleep, while melatonin helps prepare the body for rest.

Think of it as a bath filling throughout the day. As we sleep, the plug is gradually pulled and the level drops. By the early hours of the morning, the system is particularly vulnerable to being disturbed.

But if we repeatedly override those signals — staying stimulated, working late, eating at inappropriate times or exposing ourselves to the wrong light at the wrong time — the processes that should happen during rest can become disrupted.

“Nature it kind of goes, hmm, what can I do here? And it just grows gradually and it tries stuff out.”

It is a wonderfully useful way of thinking about design. Nature doesn't operate as a plug-and-play system. It changes, adapts, responds and layers experiences over time.

Designing light like nature

This brings us back to biophilia.

Natural environments contain variation, contrast, shadow, movement and changing horizons. Light filters through leaves, reflects from water, changes with clouds and seasons, and gradually shifts from morning to evening.

Our visual systems evolved within this complexity.

Shelley describes the brain as looking for patterns that are familiar from the natural world — an appropriate balance of order and complexity, rather than either complete uniformity or overwhelming contrast. Even something as simple as dappled light and moving shadows can provide the kind of non-rhythmic visual stimulus associated with nature.

Light can also strengthen classic biophilic principles such as prospect and refuge. A brighter horizon can draw the eye towards a distant view, while lower light can help create a sense of enclosure and retreat. Changes in scale, perspective and light levels can make a space feel simultaneously safer and more expansive.

And then there is darkness.

Perhaps the most important lesson is that biophilic lighting isn't about adding more light. It is about using light intelligently — and allowing darkness to exist too.

Shelley's vision for a biophilic world is therefore surprisingly simple: “A much more thoughtful and sparing use of light because our experience of light is all about contrast.”

For designers, this is a powerful shift in perspective. Light is not the final layer added after the architecture, materials and planting have been decided. It is one of the fundamental environmental signals through which our bodies experience a place.

If biophilic design is about reconnecting people with the conditions that have supported life for millennia, then we need to look up.

The sun has been designing our relationship with light for a very long time. Perhaps it is time we learned from it.

To find out more about Light and Dr Shelly, and also watch her brilliant Tedx talk here: https://ageoflightinnovations.com

What is Biophilic Design? https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/what-is-biophilic-design

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This week, the Journal of Biophilic Design is excited to announce the launch of our latest monograph, Nature Preserved: The Definitive Guide to Preserved Plants, written by Edgardo Rossi, known in the industry as The Green Man. The book takes a close look at preserved plants not simply as beautiful botanical material, but as a serious medium within interior and biophilic design. For Edgardo, the starting point is: go to the space before choosing the plants.

His experience has taught him that the material is rarely the real problem. The problem is often the project. A beautiful render can make almost anything look possible, but a designer needs to understand what the building is actually asking of the vegetation. Where does the sunlight fall? Where are the heat zones? What is the humidity doing? Where are the air-conditioning vents? Where will people touch, brush past or knock into the installation? How will the space behave throughout the year?

“You cannot use any plant in any space,” Edgardo explains. His own experience—including a challenging hotel project in Milan—taught him that plant selection has to respond to conditions rather than hope that the material will somehow adapt.

This is also why he is careful not to position preserved plants as a replacement for living plants. If a space can genuinely support living vegetation, with the light, water, care and ownership model required to keep it healthy, then living plants should be used. The problem begins when living plants are forced into environments that cannot sustain them without constant intervention.

Edgardo calls this “anti-forcing” rather than anti-living plants. Preserved plants have a particular role: bringing real botanical material into spaces where living vegetation would become difficult, wasteful or operationally burdensome. Deep interiors, difficult-access areas, ceilings, columns and other challenging locations can sometimes benefit from this approach. And, importantly, preserved plants can coexist with living plants within the same project.

But perhaps the most important part of Edgardo’s work lies behind the greenery.

The Green Lock System begins where plant preservation ends. Preserved botanical material arrives as an ingredient; the designer still has to build something with it.

Edgardo’s approach considers the complete assembly: preserved plants, a bio-based carrier and bio-based adhesive where required. His system uses expanded cork as the carrier, with the botanical material mechanically inserted and locked into the structure rather than simply being hidden behind a petrochemical-based substrate.

For Edgardo, this is about more than sustainability. It is about material honesty.

“If the greenery is real and behind there is a plastic carrier,” he argues, “there is no coherence.” The carrier becomes part of the material claim, part of the indoor environment and part of the eventual end-of-life story. Because the assembly can be taken apart, elements can potentially be refreshed, reused or repurposed rather than simply discarded.

That thinking extends to human health. Preserved plants are not air-cleaning machines, and Edgardo is careful not to make claims they cannot support. Their value is their real botanical presence: texture, materiality, experience and a connection to nature within the spaces where people spend so much of their lives. Those spaces include schools, offices, hospitals and retirement homes—places where designers are making decisions that affect many people every day.

This is ultimately what Nature Preserved sets out to do. It brings greater clarity to a category that Edgardo believes is still widely misunderstood, challenging exaggerated claims while giving designers, specifiers, growers and manufacturers a shared language for discussing preserved plants more professionally.

And perhaps his most memorable vision comes at the end of our conversation. Asked what he would do with a magic brush of biophilia, Edgardo says he would skip the lobbies—the places that are already photographed—and take nature to the people who rarely get to experience it: the child in an urban school, the resident of a retirement home, the worker on a floor where daylight barely reaches.

Not an image of nature. Not plastic.

Real vegetation.

Nature Preserved: The Definitive Guide to Preserved Plants is available as a free monograph from the Journal of Biophilic Design.

Download your copy here: https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/shop/nature-preserved-the-definitive-guide-to-preserved-plants-monograph-2

Find out more about the free Monographs we publish :  https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/biophilic-design-monographs

What is Biophilic Design? https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/what-is-biophilic-design

Want a free copy of the Journal? Visit: https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/free-materials-issue

Credits: with thanks to George Harvey Audio Production for the calming biophilic soundscape that backs all of our podcasts. 

Listen to our podcast on Audible, Amazon Music, Spotify, iTunes, YouTube and all the RSS feeds.

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What happens when we step away from the noise of everyday life and enter a space designed to help us restore and reconnect?

For holistic wellbeing expert Ali Oetjen, the answer begins with something fundamental: safety. Ali is founder of Ali Wellness in Australia and an internationally recognised holistic wellbeing expert. Through meditation, breathwork, retreats and immersive experiences, she helps people reconnect with themselves, each other and the natural world. Her work explores personal transformation, nervous-system regulation and the relationship between human wellbeing and the environments we inhabit. Ali creates retreats and workshops designed to help people step out of their habitual routines and reconnect with themselves.

She describes what happens when people leave behind the familiar cues and patterns of everyday life and enter an environment consciously designed for restoration. “They come into a new space and this space is usually designed for safety, for regulation, for healing, for their optimum health,” she explains.

Once those familiar environmental cues are removed, people can begin to make more conscious choices, question old habits and, importantly, reconnect with what they are feeling within themselves. And nature is central to that process:  “Nature is so healing and it really resonates safety within us,” she says. We are not separate from nature, she argues; our relationship with it is fundamental to how we experience the world.

That connection doesn't necessarily require an elaborate retreat or a journey into the wilderness. Looking up at the sky, hearing birdsong, feeling natural materials beneath our hands, noticing the smell of trees or simply walking outdoors can all become sensory reminders of connection.

“Simple things can even regulate our nervous system,” Ali says. Looking up at the sky, she suggests, can send signals to the nervous system associated with the parasympathetic, restorative state. Natural sounds, fresh air and the sensory qualities of the outdoors can similarly contribute to a feeling of safety and calm.

This has important implications for the spaces we design.

Light, temperature, air quality, acoustics, materials, smell and even silence are not merely aesthetic considerations. They form the sensory environment in which our bodies and minds operate. Ali points to natural light as particularly important, both for circadian rhythms and mood, while comfortable temperatures and fresh, clean air can help create an environment in which people can relax rather than remain on alert.

“It’s all a sensory experience,” she says.

Natural wood, the smell of eucalyptus, essential oils, fresh air and the textures of natural materials can all provide cues that remind us of something deeply familiar. “It’s all that connection. That keeps reminding us of home.”

That word — home — feels significant. The most restorative environments are those that allow our bodies to recognise something familiar, safe and deeply human.

The relationship between nature and wellbeing is also, for Ali, much more than a question of what nature can do for us. It is reciprocal. When she walks among trees, she doesn't think only about what she might receive from the natural world. She thinks about what she can give back.  She describes walking among the trees on the Sunshine Coast, greeting them and noticing the different environments around her. Nature becomes a relationship rather than a resource — something to engage with, listen to and care for.

Nature, she believes, can also act as a mirror for our own lives: “When we see the chaos and the beauty expressed in nature, we can also see that within ourselves,” she says. Trees and landscapes remind us that growth isn't always linear. Trees shed their leaves. Seasons change. Landscapes transform. There are periods of dormancy, darkness and renewal. Nature offers a different rhythm from the constant pressure to perform, produce and remain switched on. This is particularly important in our lives increasingly dominated by screens, traffic, artificial light and constant stimulation.

Ali's vision of the ultimate wellbeing retreat captures this philosophy perfectly: huge trees, sleeping among the canopy, bamboo and natural materials, flowing water, foraging, swimming, natural sounds and waking with the sunrise. Even the exercise would involve giving something back to the local environment and community. It is an almost entirely sensory experience — and a reminder that wellbeing isn't something that happens only in the mind.

This is what biophilic design can do. It helps us create places that help us remember what it feels like to be human, and ultimately, remember the connection we have with the natural world: “We are not separate, we are nature.”

International Design Conversations

These ideas will form part of a wider conversation at the upcoming International Design Conversations, convened by Australian landscape architect and urban designer James Worth, founder of Worth Design Co-Lab. Through the series, James brings together leading international voices across architecture, landscape architecture and sustainability to explore the future of the built environment, with his own work focused on living architecture, regenerative design and urban resilience.

The breadth of the biophilic design conversation has now become so significant that the next programme has been divided into two connected events.

IDC05A: Biophilic Hospitality, Wellness & Regenerative Tourism, takes place online on 22 October, exploring destinations designed to restore people, place and planet. The conversation brings together perspectives spanning hospitality, wellness, regenerative tourism, neuroscience, nature, natural materials, ecological design and sensory experience, including specialists in tropical bamboo architecture from Bali.

The second conversation, IDC05B, follows on 5 November, turning the focus towards how biophilic principles can improve the environments people experience every day. Both conversations are free to attend and bring together an international group of architects, designers, landscape professionals and wellbeing experts around a shared question: how can our relationship with the natural world help us create healthier, more restorative places?

As James puts it, the conversation ultimately comes back to people, place and planet — restoration and regeneration.

James Worth, Worth Design Co-Lab | Australia www.worthdesign.com.au⁠

Ali Oetjen, Ali Wellness | Australia, www.alioetjen.com⁠

To listen to the podcast we did before visit: https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/podcast-journal-of-biophilic-design/how-do-we-make-our-increasingly-dense-cities-healthier-greener-and-more-resilient

What is Biophilic Design? https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/what-is-biophilic-design

Want a free copy of the Journal? Visit: https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/free-materials-issue

What happens when we stop designing buildings only for what they do, and start designing them for how they make us feel?

For architect and sustainability leader Robert Hopkins, it is a question that has shaped more than 25 years of practice. From the Spine for the Royal College of Physicians to the extraordinary forest at the heart of the Thrive Health and Wellbeing Centre in Salford, Robert’s work brings together sustainability, health, nature and people in ways that feel both deeply considered and surprisingly intuitive.

His journey began at university, when a group of students watched the Bullring shopping centre in Birmingham being demolished to make way for another shopping centre and thought: “This is absolutely potty.” They wondered whether there was another way, and set up their own sustainability studio, exploring the reuse of buildings and the environmental issues that mattered to them.

That instinct to question the obvious has stayed with him. Initially focused heavily on building performance, Robert says that around ten years ago he began to refocus his efforts on a different question: how do people actually feel when they are in these really interesting buildings?

That shift towards people and health has become central to his understanding of biophilic design.

“For me, biophilia was actually about accessibility,” he explains. Not whether people can physically get into and around a building, but whether they can access it neurologically: whether they can feel comfortable, feel themselves and feel happy in the space.

 “It was actually just about taking a step back and thinking what really makes people feel really good somewhere.”

The Spine, in Liverpool, became an extraordinary opportunity to put that thinking into practice. The building was developed with the Royal College of Physicians, a client that challenged the design team to provide evidence for the decisions they were making. Robert introduced the WELL Standard, but the process quickly became something much deeper than collecting accreditation points.

Because the College’s own members and fellows had authored much of the medical research underpinning the standard, Robert and his team were able to speak directly to the people behind the research — and challenge it.

Although both The Spine and Daphne Steele have both achieved WELL platinum, “we weren't actually that bothered about the score that we got at all,” he said. Instead at each stage, his team kept asking why it mattered to people.

That thinking filtered down into thousands of decisions. Materials is something that we in Biophilic Design focus on. On the Spine, they set rule: “If you could touch it, it's real.” Materials were chosen for their authenticity, biophilic quality and longevity, recognising that spending a little more at the outset could create an interior that would remain good for decades.

Other rules they worked to was that nobody would sit more than seven metres from a window and a view. Light was carefully considered, including a façade designed to create the effect of dappled light associated with Japanese forest bathing. Plants were selected for their ability to help remove toxins from the atmosphere based on research from NASA. Air filtration, food, lighting and even the possibility of birdsong were considered as part of the wider experience.

The result is a building where, Robert observes, people behave differently. “Everyone's really nice to one another. And everyone talks to one another.” That matters. This is evidence that Biophilic Design can change behaviour.

The same principle runs through Thrive, the University of Salford’s Health and Wellbeing Centre, where Robert and his team approached trauma-informed design from the very beginning. The brief started with a blank sheet of paper and a request to create an environment that encourages and supports trauma-informed care.

The team explored the research and broke the idea down into practical principles, beginning with a felt sense of safety. That influenced everything from how people arrive at the building to the routes they can take through it.

Putting people first

Rather than automatically placing people into a large, dramatic entrance space, Thrive offers alternative routes. There are different kinds of waiting spaces, different acoustics and different levels of enclosure. Choice and empowerment become part of the architecture.

In consultation rooms, patients can adjust the lighting themselves. They can even choose to move to an outdoor terrace during a consultation. These are small interventions, but Robert is interested in what they do psychologically. The point is not to tick a WELL requirement for adjustable lighting but is to give someone control.

“It’s not for me to say what makes you feel comfortable,” he says. “All I have to do is have an adjustable light.”

That empathy extends beyond individual buildings. When master planning around the Daphne Steele Building in Huddersfield, Robert’s team deliberately moved away from thinking about developments in terms of square footage. They considered what makes a place feel alive, connected and human.

Buildings were broken up so that people could see one another. Outdoor spaces and terraces were distributed throughout the development. Social spaces were created not just around buildings but within them and on their edges.

Because, Robert believes, when you bring people together with the right ingredients in place, “eventually they do actually start being nice to one another.”

Perhaps the most revealing insight into his process is that this starts with listening. “Every voice matters,” he says. When developing Thrive, the team interviewed more than 100 people before designing anything. They offered different ways of participating — in-person cafés, virtual cafés, physical and virtual meetings. They wanted people to be in their comfort zone so they could understand not simply the answer they thought the designers wanted to hear, but what could actually make a difference to them.

It is this approach that makes Robert’ advice to other designers so simple.

“Don't chase points.” Instead, look at the research. Understand why something matters. Focus on the human outcome. “If you totally focus your efforts on the why,” he says, “then the accreditation just falls out at the end.”

There is no single formula for biophilic design. Robert is clear that every project is different. His team may have developed a consistent framework, but “we never do the same thing twice.” The research, the place, the client and the people all change — and the design has to respond.

To find out more about the individual projects visit: https://www.ahr.co.uk/projects/the-spine

https://www.ahr.co.uk/projects/thrive-health-and-wellbeing-centre-school-of-health-and-society

https://www.ahr.co.uk/projects/medipark-blackburn

https://www.ahr.co.uk/projects/emily-siddon-building

https://www.ahr.co.uk/projects/daphne-steele-building

And if you sign up to the Journal of Biophilic Design free newsletter (for news, evens, discounts, networking, case studies, research, etc) before 14 September you have the chance of winning memberships worth £89.99 ! https://mailchi.mp/journalofbiophilicdesign.com/50-free-subscription-promotion

What is Biophilic Design? https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/what-is-biophilic-design

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Credits: with thanks to George Harvey Audio Production for the calming biophilic soundscape that backs all of our podcasts. 

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As our cities grow, access to clean air, clean water, biodiversity and meaningful connections with nature will become ever more important. 

In this conversation, we explore living architecture, green infrastructure, urban density, clean air and water — and how we can design cities that work better for both people and the planet.

In this episode, we’re joined by James Worth, a landscape architect whose work is focused on finding practical, sustainable solutions for the future of our built environment.

James is particularly passionate about Green Infrastructure and living architecture.

James has also launched a very exciting series of roundtable online discussions: International Design Conversations. They started on Thursday 13 August and continue all year, I am joining one in October Biophilic Hospitality, Wellness & Regenerative Tourism 22 October 2026

What happens when we stop thinking of nature as something we add to a building and start thinking about it as part of the infrastructure of the city itself? For landscape architect James Worth, the answer lies in bringing disciplines, ideas and people together — and fundamentally rethinking how we design our urban environments.

James has loads of experience spanning parks and gardens, civic spaces, urban design, ecology and biodiversity. 

James believes landscape architecture has a critical role to play in creating healthier, more resilient cities. As urban populations grow, access to clean air, clean water, biodiversity, shade and meaningful connections with nature cannot remain an afterthought.

“There is the risk of green for aesthetic only,” he says, warning against greenwashing that makes a development look sustainable without delivering genuine environmental function. The answer is to go beyond the appearance of greenery and consider how landscape systems actually work, managing water, reducing heat, supporting biodiversity and reconnecting people with nature. 

“It’s very hard to retrofit trees and walls and roofs,” he points out. This is why landscape architects need to be part of the conversation from the beginning. Trees, rain gardens, green roofs, green walls, water systems and communal spaces cannot simply be retrofitted once the buildings have been designed. 

That philosophy is also behind James’ International Design Conversations, a series of online round-table discussions bringing together voices from different disciplines, cultures and areas of expertise. His motivation came partly from seeing how professional and governmental departments can operate in silos.

“The best decisions come around the round table,” he says. The conversations deliberately bring academia together with private industry, alongside architects, town planners, engineers, ecologists, water specialists and biologists. “We can all advance sustainability together at a micro and macro planning level.”

For biophilic designers, this interdisciplinary approach is crucial. Biophilic design helps practitioners understand the complex relationships between people, place, ecology, materials, water, climate and biodiversity. James describes this as a form of professional “symbiosis, one helping the other rather than not being mutually beneficial.”

His vision for the future is not necessarily about building less densely, but about building more intelligently. Mid-rise development, green roofs, rain gardens, communal spaces, tree canopy and nature-based infrastructure can help us achieve density without creating ever more hostile concrete environments.

Asked what he would create if he could paint the world with a magic brush of biophilia, James answered: “I would ensure that the places we inhabit don't take up so much space and give a lot more back to the greenery of the nature in the environment that we're living in.”

That feels like a very good place to begin rethinking the city.

Visit our events page to find out more: https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/events-1

Or go straight to the International Design Conversations website: 

https://www.worthdesign.com.au/idc

Our conversation on 22 October: https://www.worthdesign.com.au/idc005

Find out more about Landscape Architecture and Biophilic Design start here:  https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/shop/journal-of-biophilic-design-issue-20-landscape-architecture-ebook

What is Biophilic Design?  https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/what-is-biophilic-design

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What if the buildings that help us tackle climate change were also the buildings that lift our spirits?

We talk a great deal about the performance of buildings: how to reduce carbon, manage heat, conserve energy, deal with water and increase biodiversity. But perhaps we need to ask another question. What should these buildings look and feel like?

Download a copy of the Monograph for free here: https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/shop/living-architecture-monograph-journal-of-biophilic-design

For architect and Alive Labs founder Nicky Naidu, the answer is not to choose between performance and beauty. We should expect both.

Nicky has spent 20 years working in architecture, including with Foster + Partners, Arup and Wilkinson Eyre, before stepping away from conventional practice to explore different ways of living and building. His journey ultimately led to Alive Labs, where he is developing bioreceptive materials designed to allow nature to become part of architecture itself.

His starting point is philosophical.

“We build what we are.”

For Nicky, buildings are a reflection of the societies that create them. If we want a society that values nature, connection and care, perhaps our architecture should express those values too.

That thinking has led Alive Labs to develop Terranite, a bioreceptive, carbon-negative construction material designed to support biological colonisation. Rather than simply attaching vegetation to a building, the material creates a substrate in which nature can participate.

Moss is central to the approach. An ancient and remarkably resilient organism, it can absorb atmospheric pollutants, retain water, contribute to water filtration and provide thermal benefits. Alive Labs' system is designed to help reduce surface temperatures, while moss can contribute to cooling through evaporative processes and insulation in colder conditions.

The implications for cities are considerable. Our buildings could become part of the infrastructure that helps address urban heat, stormwater and biodiversity loss rather than simply contributing to those pressures.

But there is another opportunity here – and it is one we don't discuss enough.

Beauty.

Naidu questions the contemporary obsession with architecture as a diagram or a highly efficient box.

“No one wants to live in a diagram, right?”

He points instead towards the great architectural traditions of the past: Gothic cathedrals, Renaissance buildings and ancient temples, where proportion, geometry, ornament and symbolism were connected to ideas about nature, mathematics, spirituality and the cosmos.

This is particularly relevant to Biophilic Design.

Why shouldn't climate-responsive buildings be beautiful? Why shouldn't cladding become an opportunity for pattern, texture, shadow, planting and delight? Why should a building envelope have to be a flat, anonymous surface?

Think about Palladian architecture and its extraordinary attention to proportion and rhythm. Think about the awe created by Gothic architecture. Think about the tactile qualities of natural materials. Now imagine bringing that same ambition into the buildings of the future – using contemporary materials and living systems that also cool, insulate, capture water and support biodiversity.

As Nicky puts it, “net zero alone” is not enough. The ambition should be to do more.

This could change how we think about the facade. It is no longer simply a protective skin between inside and outside. It can become infrastructure: environmental, ecological, sensory and cultural.

And this applies inside as well as out. Alive Labs is developing living interior systems that can bring nature into schools, hospitals, workplaces and other buildings, creating spaces that people can see, touch and experience.

Perhaps this is where the next chapter of Biophilic Design lies: not simply putting nature into buildings, but designing buildings that work with nature.

Because, ultimately, architecture is about more than solving today's problems.

“Buildings and our expressions in them are an expression of hope.”

That feels like a good place to start imagining our cities of the future.

The Journal of Biophilic Design has produced a Monograph with Nicky Naidu and Alive Labs, exploring the ideas, materials and thinking behind this pioneering approach to living architecture. The Monograph is available to explore alongside our interview with Nicky. https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/biophilic-design-monographs

Find out more about Alive Labs

Alive Labs: www.alivelabs.co.uk

About the Journal of Biophilic Design

The Journal of Biophilic Design explores the intersection of nature, science, architecture, interiors, landscape, environmental psychology, health and wellbeing – bridging the gap between research and practice.

Subscribe, explore our latest issues and discover more conversations with the people shaping the future of Biophilic Design.

#BiophilicDesign #AliveLabs #NickyNaidu #LivingArchitecture #BioreceptiveDesign #Architecture #SustainableArchitecture #RegenerativeDesign #UrbanDesign #Moss #GreenInfrastructure #ClimateResilience #BiomimeticDesign

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Join thousands of readers receiving the latest biophilic design inspiration, research and projects every week. Just head to journalofbiophilicdesign.com.

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What happens when we stop looking at a building simply as a building?

For Lincoln Stoller, physicist, psychotherapist and son of celebrated architectural photographer Ezra Stoller, the answer lies somewhere between architecture, psychology, nature, photography and the human capacity to experience something beyond the immediately visible.

Ezra Stoller was regarded as one of the pre-eminent architectural photographers of his generation. His extraordinary archive includes some of the most significant buildings of twentieth-century modernism, photographed not simply as objects, but as experiences. His approach was distinctive: rather than producing straightforward images designed to showcase a building, he sought something beyond it – what Lincoln describes as the “essential and ethereal.”

This is particularly fascinating when we consider Frank Lloyd Wright, whose architecture is now frequently discussed through the lens of Biophilic Design, despite Wright never using the term. Wright trusted Ezra to understand what he was trying to achieve without needing to explain it. Lincoln describes their relationship as almost a meeting of opposites: Wright the forceful creator, Ezra the sensitive and receptive observer. Together, they understood something difficult to put into words – the ineffable quality of space.

And perhaps this is where photography and Biophilic Design meet.

We talk increasingly about awe: the experience of encountering something larger, more complex or more powerful than ourselves. In Biophilic Design, awe can be created through views, scale, natural processes, unexpected vistas, light, movement and encounters with the living world. Wright intuitively understood the power of these experiences. At Fallingwater, for example, architecture, water, landscape, movement and changing views combine to create something that is far more than a collection of rooms.

Ezra's photographs similarly invite us to pause. They create vistas within vistas, playing with light, scale, confinement, openness and perspective. They ask us not simply to look, but to notice, associate, feel and imagine. As Lincoln puts it, the best photographs can call into our minds things we have not previously seen, felt or thought.

That makes Eye of the Beholder more than an architectural photography book. It is an invitation to reconsider how we see the built environment – and what it might reveal about ourselves.

Lincoln is currently raising support through Kickstarter to preserve Ezra Stoller's remarkable photographic archive and bring these images and their stories together in a new book. For architects, designers, photographers, students and anyone interested in the relationship between people, place and perception, it is an opportunity to encounter some familiar buildings through very different eyes.

Because sometimes the most important thing a photograph can show us is not the building itself, but what the building makes us feel.

** Win one of 50 digital subscriptions to the Journal of Biophilic Design, just sign up to our free newsletter throughout August 2026 sign up for the chance of winning: https://mailchi.mp/journalofbiophilicdesign.com/50-free-subscription-promotion

Links mentioned in the Podcast: https://www.mindstrengthbalance.com‍ ‍

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mindstrengthbalance/from-the-eye-of-the-beholder

Lincoln’s Substack article “Is Architecture History or Prophecy?”, https://mindstrengthbalance.substack.com/p/is-architecture-history-or-prophesy?triedRedirect=true

What is Biophilic Design: https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/what-is-biophilic-design

If you love Architecture why not download our PDF on Biophilic Design and Architecture: https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/shop/journal-of-biophilic-design-issue-17-architecture-ebook Please register for our newsletter on our website https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/podcasts-journal-of-biophilic-design Credits: with thanks to George Harvey Audio Production for the calming biophilic soundscape that backs all our podcasts. Did you know our podcast is also on Audible, Amazon Music, Spotify, iTunes, and all the RSS feeds? Facebook https://www.facebook.com/journalofbiophilicdesign/ LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/company/journalofbiophilicdesign/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/journalofbiophilicdesign

Biophilic Design and biomimicry are often discussed as separate disciplines, yet they are deeply complementary. Biophilic Design reconnects people with nature, creating healthier places that nurture wellbeing and strengthen our relationship with the living world. Biomimicry asks a different, but equally important question: how can nature’s 3.8 billion years of evolution teach us to solve human challenges?

Together they offer a blueprint for creating buildings, products and systems that help all life flourish.

While architecture often looks inward for innovation, one of the most fascinating lessons for the built environment is currently emerging from an unexpected place: fashion.

Amanda Sturgeon, CEO of the Biomimicry Institute, has been leading the Institute’s Nature of Fashion initiative, exploring how lessons from natural decomposition could help address one of the world’s fastest-growing environmental challenges—textile waste. Working alongside partners including The Or Foundation in Ghana, Circle Economy in the Netherlands and the Beneficial Design Institute in Germany, the project asks a deceptively simple question: what if the materials we create behaved more like nature?

Nature, after all, has no landfill.

Every leaf, feather, branch and shell eventually becomes food for something else. Waste is simply another stage in a continuous cycle of regeneration. Human-made materials, however, often have no such ending. Polyester, nylon and complex blended fabrics can persist for decades or centuries, creating pollution long after their useful life has ended.

The Nature of Fashion project is investigating whether biological processes such as fermentation and enzymatic decomposition could safely break down difficult textile waste into valuable raw materials that can be returned to production systems rather than discarded. It is a striking example of biomimicry in action—not simply copying nature’s appearance, but learning from nature’s processes.

As Amanda explains, “Nature has been learning how to do things for 3.8 billion years.”

For those of us working in architecture, interiors and product design, this conversation feels remarkably familiar. The built environment has become increasingly focused on operational carbon, embodied carbon and material passports. Yet Amanda highlights another important consideration: designing for the entire lifecycle of a product or building from the very beginning.

As she observes, “The implications of the things we consume and create—from their extraction to their end of life—are just not considered.”

It is a challenge that extends far beyond fashion.

Whether specifying flooring, acoustic panels, furniture, wall coverings or façade systems, designers make decisions every day that influence ecosystems far beyond the project boundary. Where did the material come from? What habitats were disturbed during extraction? Can it be repaired? Reused? Returned safely to biological or technical cycles?

These questions are becoming just as important as aesthetics or cost.

Amanda also draws fascinating parallels between fashion and architecture. Both industries begin with a design decision. Both are shaped by trends, client expectations and commercial pressures. Yet those early creative choices often determine environmental impacts decades later.

The difference, she suggests, is that fashion has the ability to change rapidly.

Buildings remain for generations, while clothing collections can evolve every season. This makes fashion a valuable testing ground for material innovation. From mycelium-grown textiles and protein-based fibres inspired by spider silk to structural colours that mimic the microscopic surfaces of butterfly wings and beetles without relying on toxic pigments, biomimetic innovations are already demonstrating what becomes possible when designers look to living systems rather than petrochemicals for inspiration.

Many of these same innovations could influence interiors, finishes, furniture and future building materials.

Perhaps Amanda’s most thought-provoking observation concerns how we measure success.

Rather than focusing solely on carbon accounting, she believes we should evaluate whether our materials are genuinely positive for nature.

“If we were to design and extract materials based on whether they were positive for nature, our carbon challenge would probably evaporate.”

It is an essential reframing of the global debate, and one I share. I believe that the principle of Biophilia could help guide decision making in specification and design to restore life in all senses of the word.

Carbon remains critically important, but people often struggle to connect emotionally with tonnes of CO₂. Biodiversity, clean rivers, healthy soils and thriving ecosystems are tangible. They remind us why these conversations matter in the first place.

This is where biomimicry and Biophilic Design become natural partners.

Biophilic Design helps us create places where people experience nature and benefit from that connection. Biomimicry helps us understand how nature actually functions, revealing the principles that enable living systems to thrive.

Amanda sees them not as competing philosophies but as complementary approaches.

“Biophilic design and biomimicry are interconnected, interwoven… they’re really based on the same premise.”

We are not separate from nature—we are part of it.

For designers, this represents a shift from asking How sustainable is this product? towards the better question: How can this product actively participate in life’s regenerative cycles?

Whether designing a garment, a chair, a workplace or an entire neighbourhood, perhaps the most important design decision is not how something begins—but how it ends.

Nature has already written the brief, are we prepared to learn from it?

🌿 Win one of 50 FREE digital subscriptions to the Journal of Biophilic Design! Enter before the end of August 2026 and enjoy access to over 20 inspiring issues exploring nature, design, architecture and wellbeing https://mailchi.mp/journalofbiophilicdesign.com/50-free-subscription-promotion

https://biomimicry.org/innovation/nature-of-fashion/

Nature of Fashion Report: https://biomimicry.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Nature-of-Fashion-Report.pdf

I did a podcast with Amanda before, watch and listen to it here: https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/podcast-journal-of-biophilic-design/architect-amanda-sturgeon-on-biophilic-design-and-biomimicry

https://amandasturgeon.com.au

Have you got a copy of the Journal? You can now subscribe as a member of the Journal of Biophilic Design or purchase a gorgeous coffee table reference copy or PDF download of the Journal journalofbiophilicdesign.comor Amazon and Kindle. 

Credits: with thanks to George Harvey Audio Production for the calming biophilic soundscape that backs all of our podcasts. 

Listen to our podcast on Audible, Amazon Music, Spotify, iTunes, YouTube and all the RSS feeds.

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