planning

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Creating Eden

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Creating Eden

The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries and this fact is yet another reason we need more Biophilic Design included into urban planning, architecture, design, and every environmental facet of city and town life.

Robert Delius, Associate Director, Architect and Head of Sustainability at Stride Treglown is doing just that. Aiming to maximise biodiversity through design, Robert has a passion to create an Eden, where buildings and landscapes come together and there's a feeling of abundance, where there's nature and birdsong and insect life and a powerful sense of well-being.

 

Robert’s background in housing design and master planning has set him up in good stead to create good design and great places.  Distinctiveness and place making are a thread through his career.  He also has a particular interest in regenerative design and how great design can have a measurably positive impact on climate, ecology and people.  In short, he is a brilliantly creative proactive advocate for Biophilic Design.

 

He believes that forging a closer connection to the natural world, is extremely good for our well-being as well as being good for the planet and good for nature, and his passion for Biophilic Design is life-long. One of the projects he discusses is his Great Bow Yard project in Somerset from 2008. This had gained media attention because it had been flagged as the most energy efficient scheme in the UK.  Having recently revisited the project, Robert notes that residents, are not only pleased with the low energy costs, but were actually most enthused by the shared garden and the feelings of well-being that stem from it being a beautiful spot.

 

In this podcast, Robert talks of his background and upbringing and how that has led him to his passion for living in harmony with nature.  He discusses how on his projects, and those of his colleagues, he always looks to introduce as many opportunities as possible for planting in designs, both internally and externally to reduce hard space and introduce a softer more natural element…. READ ON and LISTEN to the PODCAST

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The Walls are Alive! The Beauty of Greening our Cities - inside and out.

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The Walls are Alive! The Beauty of Greening our Cities - inside and out.

From designing a detailed picture of the New York Skyline in moss to how we need to design with biophilia to help mitigate climate change this great podcast with Lily Turner explores how we are just starting to realise the very real benefits that Living walls can bring to our cities, and our work and healing spaces.

 Lily Turner is an environmentalist, biophilic designer and living wall specialist. She's also the director of green walls at Urban Strong, the design-build maintenance firm offering services for green building technology solutions. In 2013, she co-founded Urban Blooms a non-profit to bring large-scale, publicly accessible living walls to dense urban environments. It was after Hurricane Katrina she was rebuilding homes, restoring landscapes, repairing drip irrigation systems and fields and got to do a lot of great community projects which inspired her to launch Urban Blooms, which aims to bring greenery back into the built environment to benefit people in the community.

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Learn how to Lead Change - Essential Tools for Biophilic Designers

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Learn how to Lead Change - Essential Tools for Biophilic Designers

Change is about people and when it comes to people, there is no formula and there is no one way, this is challenging and hard. For designers, architects, planners who are trying to convince people to do something different, to do something maybe that business has never done before, what tools do we need to help take our clients on that “change” journey with us?

I was lucky to catch up with the Change Master, Jennifer Bryan, who will also be speaking at Workplace Trends in London on 18th October 2023. Jennifer shares with us some tips to help you lead that change, for her there is “no change without learning and no learning without change,” and it has to come from a “people centric perspective.”

Jennifer, gives us some sound advice. She describes what she calls the “end person in mind approach.” If you think about the person who is the furthest away from the decision making room, when they first hear about the change (whether that the watercooler gossip or a town hall) if you can make that initial moment for that positive then you will have a positive initial moment for everyone else in between.

There are 8 different reasons why people resist change. Jennifer outlines some with us here. Sometimes it’s because they don’t understand the change, or it could be how they perceive it, it could be fear or emotional, or historical. If you want to fine tune your potential to lead change, get your hands on her book: “Leading People in Change”. Understand where that “resistance” might be coming from. Ask the questions so you might understand why they might be resisting. Take them on a bit of a journey. Help people understand the “so what”.

We forget that other people aren’t in that same space, and we need to be able to articulate that “so what” but it has to be that “so what” for them.

Think of this podcast as the essential spanners in your “Toolbox of Persuasion.” There’s a lot of good advice in this podcast for those involved in bringing Biophilic Design into the mainstream. We can help leaders and managers understand that Biophilia is not just fluff, help them to visualise a positive outcome and from a different angle.  

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Building with Nature

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Building with Nature

Are you an agent for change? What is the barrier to designing better? Sometimes it is the apparent complexity of legislation governing ecology, planning and design that prevents people from discovering the best way of doing something. Fortunately, there is a simple award scheme that helps developers, builders, planners and designers navigate the myriad of paperwork and advisory bodies.

We speak with Dr Gemma Jerome, Director of Building with Nature, which helps define what good looks like in terms of green infrastructure (the way planners talk about nature). What I particularly love about Building with Nature is that it also helps give nature a seat around the table, especially at the beginning of the planning process and helps nature become a specification driver in planning and development. Building with Nature has an open-source Standards Framework, a one-stop-shop for all sectorial knowledge and expertise including Nature recovery, Sustainable water management through nature-based solutions, wellbeing, access and inclusivity to open and green spaces.

We talk about how planners and designers can use the Building with Nature Award Scheme as an external verification to tell the story of what they’ve done, to share learning, and to reassure key stakeholders who want better outcomes for people and wildlife. For instance, if you need to reassure communities that the developer has thought about all these things, or the local authority needs external verification, or investors need assurance. The Award Scheme is measurable and so offers this metric-based assurance to help you demonstrate to stakeholders you are planning and designing with the goal of reaching net zero, supporting nature recovery, as well as supporting people’s health and wellbeing 

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Town Planners as Doctors for Mother Earth – Garden Cities for the 21st Century

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Town Planners as Doctors for Mother Earth – Garden Cities for the 21st Century

It seems that in the 21st century we have even more challenges, from tackling climate change and biodiversity decline to an ageing population. Dr Wei Yang, influential thought-leader and a powerful advocate for climate action and nature-based solutions, advocates a people centric approach to community and environment. It is fundamental to create a balanced system for people, nature and society to exist in harmony. When we are dealing with so many different complex issues, we need to take a simple approach, with the main focus being that without nature we cannot survive. We need a mindset change when it comes to civic planning especially.

 

As human beings we have taken from nature and not given back to nature, and Dr Yang argues, as the Garden City Principle celebrates, we are missing a trick. There is a misunderstanding of garden cities. When we say “garden cities” people think, lots of trees. But it is a sophisticated, yet simple, social economic model. Using a land value capture model. Through development the land value increases and that can be captured providing social economic support to the community.

 

Dr Yang discusses how state run Social welfare can be a very top down approach and not necessarily what the community needs and there is a frustration in general with the Town Planning profession. Dr Yang opens our eyes to the fact that planning is in fact multi-disciplinary, not only is it an applied science discipline but it is also an art discipline. This highly sophisticated profession cuts across so many different disciplines, but, she argues, we need to ensure we maintain compassion and selflessness when we are planning our towns and cities. In fact, town Planners should be Doctors for Mother Earth

Read on and listen…

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Pioneer Nature Method in Architecture

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Pioneer Nature Method in Architecture

How can we work with the landscape more as architects and designers to not only create beautiful spaces but ones that also have a positive impact on our and nature’s wellbeing? We speak with Stephen Melvin, of Atelier Architects who desribes himself as a “landscape facilitator”. How he looks at how the landscape itself is structured and presents itself and then see how to weave the design into the natural space. He has developed the “Pioneer Nature Method” which he tells us about in this podcast.

Steve highlights the need to respect that underlying process of nature that will outlive us, how we need to build in and with the landscape and really consider how our buildings can live with nature. By talking through images shown in the video accompanying this podcast (viewable on YouTube and also on the Journal of Biophilic Design website here), he shows us a project as a case study, so we can follow his thought processes from concept through to render, looking at different aspects from materials, light, air to how people will use the space and also how it represents the client’s aims too.

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Chris Packham - Why we need to build with Nature in Mind

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Chris Packham - Why we need to build with Nature in Mind

With our countryside fast vanishing under concrete, there is much we can do to mitigate the loss by placing the natural world at the heart of development and planning. “Housing developments and houses themselves should be designed to provide space for both wildlife and people” – The Wildlife Trusts. But how do we get to this mindset? We were very excited to be joined by Chris Packham, naturalist, television presenter, writer, photographer, conservationist, campaigner and filmmaker. A very much respected presenter of BBC’s BAFTA Award-winning Springwatch, Autumnwatch and Winterwatch series.

In our discussion, we talk about Biophilic Design and he makes an urgent call about why we need to bring nature into our built environment. “If we are not in contact with nature, how are we ever going to learn to love or recognise its true value.”

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Nature and Health in an Urban Setting

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Nature and Health in an Urban Setting

There has been quite a bit written and discussed recently about the mental health benefits of getting out into nature especially in urban environments. COVID19 highlighted the relief that being outside in nature gave us. We speak with Dr. Melissa Marselle (see our previous conversation as well on Complex Patterns, Biodiversity and Nature Views”) on how nature especially in cities has helped us deal with stressors of the pandemic and the consequences of lockdown, how it has enabled us to meet other people safely, get out of our homes and also offer us the opportunity for physical activity. Melissa discusses over 40 years of research which consistently shows that a natural environment has beneficial and restorative effects on us.

She shares with us what types and qualities of nature are best for the health and wellbeing of people and the planets looking at greenspace, water, planting and spaces that promote biodiversity and more. We have just entered the UN Decade of Rewilding (launched June 2021), where we hope to see more nature being brought into cities and biodiversity encouraged. Improving our urban environment with nature is so important now more than ever.

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