Exploring the use of Biophilic Design Frameworks within Environmentally Sustainable Design studio

Abstract

Rise of the global environmental movement is entrenched in environmental conservation, protection, and enhanced love towards nature, nurturing a rich human–nature connectedness, inducing biophilia. Built environment drastically transformed to integrate sustainability through environmentally sustainable design (ESD) generally practiced using a predetermined set of criteria as a design framework. This ESD generated technically sophisticated buildings, in performance and expression, questioning their ability to reconnect humans with nature. Biophilic design (BD) developed as a potential approach to enhance the human–nature connectedness in the built environment, the missing link within ESD. Industry quickly responded by incorporating aspects of BD into ESD design frameworks.

Architectural education openly embraced ESD, and the industry frameworks were widely adapted as design frameworks. However, only a handful BD frameworks, are found primarily focused on health and wellbeing benefits achieved through a sensory experience, restricting their use in the ESD studio. This study fills this gap by developing an educational design for BD. The study explored the students’ sustainability perception, use of the introduced process bridging technique, their design thinking process and the biophilic quality of design. The statistical analysis found that students in the intervention year had a higher biophilic quality. Analysis revealed three sustainability focuses: nature-centric, human-centric, and built-centric. Five distinct BD thinking models were identified: the biophilic criteria, category, overlay, process, and conceptual model. With the findings from the study, the educational design was further developed into a guide that can be adopted in sustainable architectural studios to scaffold student learning to practice BD for enhanced human–nature connectedness.