Chapter – 4

Inference:
In many of the examples that we come across in the history, various buildings are
designed and built without incorporating the philosophy of biophilia in mind, but it
greatly shows man’s affiliation towards nature. With changing trends in architecture
towards eco-friendly and sustainable designs, biophilia emerges as one stop solution
for human psychological issues and ecological issues towards restoring the
environment back. Today a lot of architects approach projects in this way to convince
the clients by explaining its uses and importance. But to take it the next level of
implementation in India, its not enough for architects to come together, it’s the
common public who should understand its value, their duty towards the environment
and make this world a healthy place to live. Implementation of Biophilia on a larger
scale ranging from small street to global level, every country should incorporate this
into the master plans proposed for every city by the government. Rules and
regulations of incorporating biophilia at the minimal level possible in every built
project should be formulated to compensate every natural green space tuned into a
man-made structure and this serves as approval conditions and guidelines to be
followed by all designers and developers.

Conclusion:
The modern era that we are living in has witnessed sustainability crisis in enormous
loss of biodiversity, natural resources depletion, increase in pollution levels and
atmospheric degradation due to conventional building methods. As a remedy to these
problems, using of eco-friendly materials and techniques, increasing greenery,
recycling strategies are inevitable. But beyond implementing these strategies, it is our
self-interest to maintain and conserve such ecosystems and buildings. This sense of
positive relationship to nature ultimately motivates us to become good stewards and
sustain these places over time and this is the promise given by Biophilic design.
Biophilic design is a concept to which we have always felt connected but in the
recent times, there is a conscious effort done by several countries to produce designs
that are eco-centric and nature friendly.
Some indices that can be considered for measuring are water area size, humidity
level, noise level, air ventilation rate, air supply rate, CO2 level, temperature,
daylight factor, daylight autonomy, plant and animal species numbers (biodiversity
level), accessible green space area and rate, viewable green space area and rate, tree
canopy scale, indoor plant size and density, natural material type and quantity, colour
brightness and contrast, focal lengths in prospect, and fractal dimension in
complexity. Although having numerous intangible effects of biophilia, to make it
theoretically available for architects and designers to use, quantifying all the
qualitative elements becomes important but substantiating quantities such as sense of
belonging, fulfillment of personal identity, the satisfaction of aesthetic appearances
scientifically is very difficult.
The biophilic design framework still lacks explicit design strategies and guidelines to
translate these approaches or elements into architectural design, as only general
strategies and considerations of biophilic design can be derived from the existing
literature. The biophilic design framework embraces a wide variety of ‘natural’
design, from physical, sensory, metaphorical, morphological, material to spiritual
experiences.
Although various theories explaining biophilic importance, its psychological
necessities, practical difficulties exist in adopting and applying in design.
Adopting these strategies in an extreme climatic condition of north is very difficult
with the worked-out patterns and strategies. Emphasizing more on natural lighting
and natural process as it triggers a lot of environmental changes and socio-cultural
event. Regarding the north, they have a highly fluctuating seasonal variations with
different photoperiods which makes it difficult for people to depend on daylighting
for day to day living. This field requires more research on globally accepted biophilic
principles and setting lighting standards as guidelines. Another major shortcoming of
Biophilic design is there is no systematic framework through which designing
process of integrating biophilia is proposed. The quality of the design produced
depends only on the knowledge and experience of the architect. Further research
should focus on quantifying the identified qualities in a proper assessment or rating
system.
Looking deeply into biophilic patterns at a microscopic level, the way human eye
perceives information is explored significantly and it has various positive effects on
human psychological state and growth. Our eye can view wired fractal patterns,
increasing our sensitivity, observation, concentration, reduce stress and increase
aesthetic sense which we cannot develop through conventional square, rectangular
and triangular geometries that we see every day as building configurations. This
aspect of biophilia branches out into interior designing deeply discussing the nature
analogues. Quantifying the fractal values (D Value) is required for different spaces to
foresee the behavioral patterns in such spaces. For example, a particular painting
inspired from nature should have a particular fractal when kept in an airport and
changes accordingly for a hospital setting where it is even more critical on the
orientation and placing of the painting. The long term vision of generating these
patterns is to increase enhanced pattern recognizing abilities to provide eye friendly
views to gain attention beyond the stress inducing vision towards electronic gadgets
and this engagement with fractal patterns enhances mental health, encourages to
perform diverse activities and consistent performances an office, a retail store,
medical healing or even in an educational environment.
People on a global scale have witnessed lifestyle change in the past 2 years hit by the
pandemic. Everyone being confined within a room space, realized that their present
living conditions could not cope up with pandemic and started to look for spaces that
rejuvenate themselves. This realization led to a lot of improvement in implementation
of biophilia in various cities across the world. Conveying the positive effects and
healing of biophilic design on health, needs, and behaviors that occurred in the post-
pandemic era, and the sense of well-being to urban areas and accommodation
environments is a strong design policy to support public health. This article briefly
deals with various methods to implement biophilic design features that defending the
identity of space, reduces stress, provides healing and well-being, visual and non-
visual connection to nature, also assist the post-pandemic era needs. Various benefits
that addressed post pandemic era are
  It enables humans to evaluate the changing natural processes during the
different times in a day/ year in the ecosystem the design is placed in.
 Forming authentic and identifiable spaces through giving references to the
nature and landscape of the “Place” in the design.
 It enables humans to feel the climatic and meteorological changes, sun, rain,
and cold, avoid stress, through breathing quality air, relax and get through the
lockdown and quarantine processes easily.
As evidence to support the unconscious implementation of biophilia in our building
designs, the research on settlements of people in Naxi in China has been identified to
have biophilic design features in their century old vernacular houses and town
settlement. As Bernard Rudofsky described, vernacular architecture as “the
architecture without architects” reflects direct and more instinct interactions among
the
human, built environment and natural environment. More than any other stakeholder
investing in such projects, the public involvement in appreciating and maintaining
such systems critically decides the success of implementing biophilia. For future
studies may focus on the clarification of the strengths of each discipline and
identification of opportunities for further promoting this observation through
multidisciplinary collaboration. Through this observation, every place has a strong
response to a particular biophilic feature due to its physical location, culture, habits,
etc. The future can be developed from a more place-based relationship and local
community focused perspective for exploring biophilia rather than incorporating all
the identified principles.
Biophilic Design does not only aim at avoiding the negative impacts of human
activities on the natural habitat, but also have immediate positive effects on our
mental and physical wellbeing. In terms of deep research and technology various
innovations are made that are either intangible or completely not visible to a lay man
in biophilia. One such concept that is widely arising is industrial designing of various
eco-friendly products. It offers a bridge between artificial and natural processes based
on a mutual
appreciation and symbiotic interdependence. Biophilic designs are evolving to
produce bio collaborated products as building materials not only for aesthetic
reasons, but serves as sustainable functional alternative to artificial technologies.
These innovations rejuvenates the entire urban environment in environment and
climate restoration. An important question for future studies is to determine effective
strategies to incorporate
new understanding of natural systems within the design education and practice to
increase awareness and knowledge of such approach.
The case studies provide an insight on various methods of how biophilia is
incorporated in architecture and how it influences the people who use that space. The
Titan Integrity Campus, Bangalore best describes that Nature in space and Nature of
the space principles by designing an ecosystem that functions on its own. The entire
plant life bedded inside the water, on climbing contours, mud mounds, balcony
seating, built as a green screen serves as a visual treat and climate influencing
character. The entire water body supports an aquatic life, colourful flowering plants
which as a whole always makes an employee feel a better person, motivated to
achieve things in life and find peace at doorstep every day. The designs exhibits a lot
of mystery character making a commoner a pause, contemplate and admire every
view of the space from every corner. As a luxury character, best views of greenery is
designed in Park royal Pickering, Singapore and the geometrical placement of greens
enlighten the whole rectilinear structure with visual pleasures. This project exhibits
various characteristics of nature analogues as a part of luxury interiors and
incorporates new methods of integrating the real greenery inside. With abundant day
lighting and a comfortable ambient climate, biophilic design proves to be cost-
effective on longer runs to reduce the dependency on alternative energy sources.
Biophilic design has the potential to make one feel better physiologically when
designed with utmost care and considerations like Koo Tech Puat Hospital. With
dense patch of greenery that can be viewed from various levels makes a person
realize the power of nature and constantly heals a person from within. The Urban
farming practiced in various parts of Singapore is a source of education provided to
all the citizens on nurturing nature besides is commercial purpose. Biophilic design
integration brings the entire neighbourhood together apart from the users of the
hospital and gives a new meaning to how a space can be used. Beyond a building, a
neighbourhood, when an entire city is designed on biophilic principles on urbanism,
cities like Lavasa evolve in Pune. Unlike others, the dense natural features already
present in the mountains are disturbed so minimally to establish an entire city and
still manage to provide healthy, buzzling urban environment.
Getting ourselves immersed within nature to understand what we have lost in all
these years is the starting point for a society’s journey of implementing biophilic
principles.
Biophilic design influences positively from microscopic scale to a macroscopic scale
and from human centric view to an eco-centric view. Adopting new lifestyle of
taking care of these features could be little difficult to accept or even to invest on it
but it proves to be successful on a longer run and its intangible impacts also show on
spending considerable time in such a space. Along with various methods of
innovating planting technology, maintenance systems, cost effective methods should
also be researched further. Awareness programs are inevitable for a common man to
integrate such living species beyond a biophilic urban environment to make this
world a better place to live in.