Biophilic Design to address human's need for Nature in daily artificial environments

Biophilic Design is an applied science drawing inspiration from findings on Man- Environment relationship and in particular on biophilia, which actually aims to plan artificial and urban environments addressing innate human’s preference for natural over urban environments. To this end evolutionary biologists, environmental psychologists and architects are working together to identify the characteristics of the natural world that can be included in planning artificial spaces in order to enhance environmental preference and psycho- physiological wellbeing. Literature shows that exposure to Nature reduces stress and recover from mental fatigue, stimulates creativity and clear thinking, improves physical and pyschological well-being and accelerates healing in adults. Our studies with children show that the direct contact with Nature helps restoring directed attention and fosters asymmetric empathy; attention and empathy are both basic constructs of biophilia. Therefore biophilic design should turn an environment into a place that improves attentional restoration and asymmetric empathy, a differentiated participation in the fate of non-human life forms and their biotopes. Recently we have also investigated the relationship between perceived restorativeness and preference for building facades with different degrees of natural elements. A direct correlation among the variables has emerged: the building perceived as more restorative were also highly preferred because characterized by more natural elements. Accordingly we have filled out a list of “biophilic qualities”, that we aim to standardize into an instrument named biophilic quality indexes (BQIs). We think that BQIs will be a helpful tool for architects and urban planners committed in facing human need for Nature in daily environments and to design environments favouring cognitive and emotional “sustainability” – which concerns feelings, perceptions and e otions of human beings in accordance with their innate biophilia and naturalist intelligence.