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The Wave - Connecting us to our Blue Mind

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The Wave - Connecting us to our Blue Mind

Tying in with Issue 6, our Blue Mind edition of The Journal of Biophilic Design we speak with Nick Hounsfield, Founder and Chief Visionary Officer at The Wave in Bristol. The Wave is an inland Surfing destination.

After working in the healthcare sector and realizing that not only one of the key aspects for people was that they were lonely but that they also were missing a connection to nature, Nick wanted to create something at scale that would have a positive impact. He also wanted to reach out to people who didn’t have access to a private healthcare system.

“How can we democratise this? How can we make it more accessible for more people?” Nick explains how he went on to create The Wave. He had a very clear purpose and mandate, wanting to appeal to everyone, be accessible in all seasons and ensuring he addressed barriers to accessing to green and blue space. “We have to break down those barriers through design, through great landscaping, a good business model, and also make sure that we're not destroying the planet and local ecology either.”

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Skogluft – Forest Air. Reconnecting people to nature

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Skogluft – Forest Air. Reconnecting people to nature

We speak with Morten Kvam, CEO of Skogluft. Not only does it sound beautiful and uplifting, in Norwegian it means “Forest Air”. We talk about how plants are essential to have in the built environment and how the main founder of Skogluft Bjorn Virumdal was a mechanical engineer and realised that biological models were needed to explain the effects of nature indoors. NASA had conducted some research on how astronauts would be affected by the lack of nature. After speaking with them to explore their findings Bjorn then conducted further scientific research to prove how different plants and different light affected people in different working environments.

His research looked at three main aspects: the feeling of being awake, headaches and respiratory problems and he took readings before and after the intervention.

The results showed the positive effects of having nature indoors. Tiredness reduced by 40%, headaches reduced by 35% and concentration problems reduced by 16%. Morten tells us that they have over 7.2kg worth of evidence that nature indoors is good for us!

We also talk about the importance of light. The positive effect of light reflecting on nature. “We are programmed to stay in nature, we have always been surrounded by plants and light together,” Morten says. “It makes people react more positively when we see light reflected on plants.”

In his magic brush of biophilia, he says we should be looking to install nature everywhere, and “just like toilets are compulsory in buildings so should nature be compulsory indoors everywhere.” I think I’ll be sharing that last thought many many times. It’s straightforward and simple to grasp - nature should indeed be compulsory in every building.

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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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Sensory Reactivity

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Sensory Reactivity

When we design spaces, we need to consider how beautiful a place looks, how useful it is, is it fit for function and so on. We should also consider how the sensory elements of the space also stack up. In other podcasts and also in the Journal itself, we look at how our senses are impacted by sound, light, smell, even the haptic elements (those things we touch), smell (is the air fresh and clear) and many other things. All of us are affected by the impact our environment has on our senses, some of us more than others.

In this episode, we speak with Dr Keren MacLennan, Assistant Professor in Neurodiversity in the Department of Psychology, Durham University. Her research focuses on understanding how autistic people’s sensory processing differences relate to their mental health and experiences of different environments. She is co-producing research to support mental wellbeing to make environments more enabling for autistic individuals

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Plants to the Rescue! #PlantsatWorkWeek2023 LIVE in Oxford!

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Plants to the Rescue! #PlantsatWorkWeek2023 LIVE in Oxford!

Live footage! We are really excited to join Plants@Work in Oxford to interview Ian Drummond the concept designer behind this year’s Plants @Work celebration! “Plants to the Rescue”.

An ambulance makes an appearance at the Oxford Business Park. Everyone is keen to know who’s in need of medical help without appearing too nosey. Watching from afar one person noted something wasn’t quite right – plants kept appearing, peeping out of the back of the ambulance and round the corners of the doors. Where was the patient? And what had happened?

Read on and watch!

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Research proves that Biophilic Design increases Workplace value

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Research proves that Biophilic Design increases Workplace value

A new pioneering research study proves that there is definitely a business case for introducing Biophilic Design into a Workplace. The findings of this study shows an incredible 200% increase in well-being and environmental value compared to a normal workspace! The research was carried out at PLP Offices over the course of 8 weeks. The researchers monitored the participants daily work during three distinct environment scenarios: a controlled space (with no plants), a second space with some planting, and a third space with lots of plants. They monitored participants through qualitative (questionnaires, interviews, journaling with diaries) and quantitative means (air quality, VOC, CO2, temperature, humidity, light, heart rate, steps, sleep quality, noise level, brainwaves). The results are further proof that introducing plants into an office space really makes a difference to employee wellbeing, healthy, productivity, and a business’ bottom line.

In this podcast, we speak with Adrian Byne, MD of Benholm Group who supported the research, providing plants and also who will be hosting an event in their Falkirk offices for designers to explore the results with the researchers and network and discuss what makes a good biophilically designed workplace.

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Making a Difference, One Roof at a Time

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Making a Difference, One Roof at a Time

Did you know that London is an average of 10 degrees warmer than other cities in the UK? Imagine if we had green roofs on every building in the city, the temperature of our city would reduce and lessen our impact on our fragile planet. Sedum absorbs the heat, it doesn’t bounce the heat back into the atmosphere. The plants are also air purifying, afford insulation, they help mitigate flood risk, encourage biodiversity, reduce air pollution and the urban heat island effect and also prolong the lifespan of the roof covering. One amazing fact I learnt today, was that they also increase the efficiency of solar panels, with a 5% gain as they stop the UV rays hitting and damaging the roof. Liv Eyres from Sedum Green Roof who will also be at Planted Country 9-11 June 2023 at Stourhead in Wiltshire, shares with us why they make for good habitats for biodiversity and so much more. Liv Eyres from Sedum Green Roof who will also be at Planted Country 9-11 June 2023 at Stourhead in Wiltshire, shares with us why they make for good habitats for biodiversity and so much more.  

A sedum roof is essentially an additional layer on top of a finished waterproof roof. Little plants nestle in a tray, sitting in healthy (peat-free!) soil, on top of filter fleece and a drainage layer.

Read on, listen to the podcast and watch the DEMONSTRATION video too…

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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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Reconnecting with nature will save our society

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Reconnecting with nature will save our society

Sustainability matters, it is a matter of survival. For Carlo Battisti, President at Living Future Europe this is essential. We cannot design or build without considering this.

We already know the solutions, we need to implement them.

Carlo co-founded the Biophilic Society and coordinates LFE biophilic design strategy. “There are so many global issues to solve, our responsibility must start from the built environment, we know that 40% of emissions come from built environment and these have an impact on global issues.”

Each time we build, we start from scratch which means it’s difficult to standardise the processes, also the sector is so slow to change, but the built environment shapes the way we are living.

Carlo tells us about his experience and also about the Living Building challenge framework which was developed in 2006. We are now at the 4th version of the standard which was published in 2019. Biophilic Design has always been a core part of this framework. If we design and build with a better connection to nature, using natural light, better airflow, etc, there will be better energy consumption, greater energy efficiency. Also of course, there are lots of studies which show that bringing sufficient daylight into enclosed spaces, for instance in schools or hospitals, patients recover quicker, students learn faster in classrooms. There is such interesting and robust data.

The Biophilic Summit is taking place on 7th June 2023. The details of the summit programme and how to register can be found here: https://lfeurope.regfox.com/biophilia-summit-2023

Read on…

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Greening the Streets of Nairobi

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Greening the Streets of Nairobi

Nature is home. Nature is where you can think, rejuvenate, it constantly gives to you. There is nothing man made that can replace the benefits of nature. Edna Odhiambo, is a Climate Change Lawyer based in Nairobi Kenya. Edna was speaking at the brilliant 8th Annual Sustainability Week conference, run by The Economist. As an undergraduate law student, she witnessed one of worst droughts in the Horn of East Africa, and she asked herself “what can the law do about this?” She realised then that one of the main keys to unlocking the solution is through a focus on policy and regulatory frameworks across different sectors.

In terms of sustainability, Kenya leads in Africa. For example, more than 85% of their electricity comes from clean energy sources like solar, wind, hydro and geo thermal. But there are many challenges. For example, there are millions of Kenyans who lack access to clean energy sources, some are still using firewood and charcoal, dirty cooking fuels, which also increase respiratory illnesses and people are cutting down forests. 87% of Kenya is arid and semi-arid. If you consider then there is very little arable land and then couple this with climate change impacts, water scarcity we should be looking at opportunities to find solutions locally while we wait for access to innovative and affordable technology. Edna explains there are many basic low-cost solutions which can be done by local communities. We need to make a difference as fast as we can.

One of the main themes of this podcast is how we need to bring in an integrated approach to transport, we need a multi-modal approach which seamlessly connects walking, bus and public transport, dock-less bikes, cycling lanes and walking pathways. Globally transport is the cause of 15% of emissions. The time has come to stop putting highways before people, building cities around transport, we should be putting people first. Traffic is a major cause of outdoor air pollution, which causes asthma in children, and there are even studies looking at there being an increased risk of dementia event early studies.

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The River of Life – Orientate Earth, Built Environment and Sustainable Workplace

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The River of Life – Orientate Earth, Built Environment and Sustainable Workplace

Harvesting the energy of our people, is a key message in this great podcast with Jaime Blakeley-Glover, founder of Orientate.earth and a collaborator with other businesses all working towards the same goal, to make our world and our environment a better place to live and thrive.

 We talk about his the “Social benefit of buildings”. For Jaime, we have a huge responsibility in relation to how we create our built environment, the decisions we take will have an effect for years after we’ve gone. We leave a legacy, and a choice. Do we create amazing awe-inspiring connected places or create dull and lifeless ones?

It is only by understanding and engaging with all the stakeholders, from the building owners to the people who work, visit, use and supply the buildings that will allow us to think about the place our buildings and places have in responding to the needs of people now and in the future. We need to broaden out how we think of things.

Buildings are more than just Units and assets, these are places where people live, how we build and design affects their lives and wellbeing. Let’s look at the Social-economic indicators as well as the “warm” data, this collective imagination to assess this broad set of information, and then respond to it.

Biophilic design and nature-inspired design does support a more sustainable way of living. It is proven, that if we care about something we do more to protect it, if we bring nature more into our sense of view, we will do more to protect it. We can also be inspired by nature and look at how buildings and cities are living systems.

We are part of the living system, in terms of cities, and nature.

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How to design to incite a feeling? Workplace Design 101

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How to design to incite a feeling? Workplace Design 101

How do you design to incite a feeling? We spend five days of our week in the workplace, and it impacts our psychology massively. When we walk into a space, how do we design to excite that sense of awe. For Becky Turner, workplace psychologist for Claremont Group Interiors, they have conducted research to examine how we replicate that feeling of “oooh” in the workplace.

For many it is the sense of sense of connection that drives people to the office, what else will encourage the workforce the consider the cost of the commute whether it’s financial or time? Claremont researched office-based workers to find out what types of things invite people back to the office. With an overall low occupancy at 30% businesses are feeling the pinch when it comes to workforce presence.

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Nature-Inspired Workplace Design

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Nature-Inspired Workplace Design

Here’s a big question, how do we inspire more people to come back into the workplace? For Steve Brewer, founding partner of the design agency, Burtt-Jones and Brewer, we need to create a workplace EXPERIENCE which works for you as an individual. Having worked with HM Treasury and so many other businesses transforming their workplaces, for Steve the most important part of the conversation is with the individual. Rather than go through a company and blitz a design with a hammer and chisel, for Steve, the keys are workshops. “We benchmark where that company is and where that company wants to go in the future. It’s a very tailored response, and very much we see ourselves as Co-designing workspaces.” The better experience at work, the better the end-result. “The more you can run through that process, the better the foundations you can build.” Steve sees that his role is to pull all the “Jigsaw pieces together and try and make it the best-looking picture that everybody agrees to”.

What about Biophilic Design? For Steve, he has always tried to bring outside experience inside the office. Sometimes, businesses might see biophilic design and plants as a sticky plaster solution. If you think about it the buildings are often already there “glass sealed boxes with air conditioning. Maybe you’ve been on tube, rushed to work, grabbed a coffee, no breakfast, kids were screaming, then you are in the work environment. If we can bring more biophilic design into those spaces, then that experience is going to lift your wellbeing, calm you down by not seeing white walls, glaring light, bad acoustics…”

 

Steve goes on to explore how to introduce Biophilic Design early as you can into the design consultation process, but most importantly being sensitive and understanding how and when to convince stake-holders who might have a thousand other things on their mind when they are sitting around the table.

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Lloyds Bank, Sustainability and Greening Workplaces

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Lloyds Bank, Sustainability and Greening Workplaces

For Paula Rowntree, Head of Workplace Design for LLOYDS BANKING GROUP, the office very much plays an important role in the workplace. For her it is the human connection, the corridor moments, saying hello, being creative, having conversations, seeing when someone is not ok. So when it comes to designing spaces, the focus is very much on the wellbeing of the people using the space, as well as the sustainability aspect, which is why Biophilic Design is such a positive element in a designer’s bag.

 “Biophilia and planting becomes a visible statement” something that says that this company is committed to sustainability.  “Also by putting planting back into the environment in branches, we are helping make people feel a little bit better in the work environment.” The spaces feel good, there’s re-oxygenation, alongside brand messaging. “There is something so joyful, it makes you feel: wow this in an amazing space. We want to make them timeless, make them last, to be there for future generations, because planting does that right, it doesn’t just stop.”

 

 

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New Natural History GCSE – so we are not the Last Page of the Book of Earth

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New Natural History GCSE – so we are not the Last Page of the Book of Earth

With such a depletion of wildlife in the UK alone, with so many schools, cities, towns, and housing estates being built so far removed from our natural world how on earth does the next generation stand a chance to learn about the natural world and be sympathetic to it?

 At the same time, we also are demanding literally the earth from our natural world, and the way we extract from the natural world is getting more intensive and damaging.  As we move further away from it how do we fill that nature gap in society? We speak with Environmentalist, Producer and Writer Mary Colwell who has campaigned and devised a NEW Natural History GCSE designed to help bridge this chasm, helping put nature and the wonderment and fascination of nature into education.

“Nature is for everyone, it is there for YOU to engage with, that’s why putting it into the school system is important, making it open access and free to all, for everyone to engage with. We know from the COPs recently that we are looking at a very difficult time ahead, and those young people will have to live in this difficult time, and if they are going to make the right decisions for themselves, people and the planet, they need to be more knowledgeable, more engaged and more connected to this planet we live on.”

 Read and Listen on…

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Healing yourself at Home with Biophilic Design

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Healing yourself at Home with Biophilic Design

Tying in with the second issue of our magazine, our theme for this podcast is HOME. We speak with Award-winning Interior Designer Nuria Muñoz who tells us about her journey into Biophilic Design and why she decided to follow her dream path start her own company and do something good for the planet.

Nuria is a Wellbeing Interior Designer, Consultant, Speaker and Educator based in Valencia Spain and works all over the world. She founded Habitarmonia, a consulting and design studio that offers both B2B and B2C services, has won awards and is passionate about our beautiful planet, and designs interiors that respect our world and brings harmony and happiness to the families who live in them.

"We heal people by using Biophilic Design." Giving us an example where she transformed a home of a couple who had stressful jobs and children who were struggling on different levels, she explains the importance of co-creation, working with the family, asking them lifestyle questions, finding out their challenges, listening and also, and this is important, explaining HOW the design changes will help them.

"It's important to make people aware of the benefits of biophilic design. We create room and space, but our challenge as interior designers, it's not just about looking saying and showing it looks nice, it is important also to communicate that the Biophilic Design solution helps you with well-being and happiness."

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Nature on Film - From David Attenborough and the BBC to Termite Mounds!

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Nature on Film - From David Attenborough and the BBC to Termite Mounds!

Biophilia is more than plants, light and air, it’s also about surrounding ourselves with living beings and our living natural world. If we think about it, E.O.Wilson’s seminal book, Biophilia celebrates all aspects of our living planet and is a call for that direct connection with nature. Wilson’s book examines our inherent connection to living species, the fascination of life, and how other living societal systems can inform our own. In fact, his lifelong interest in ant colonies emphasises this. Creating those moments of intimacy with nature has a really important place in our modern world where there is a disconnect with getting out there.

In this wonderful podcast, we speak with Michael Potts, who has spent more than 30 years as a wildlife cameraman, mostly for the BBC in more than 50 countries worldwide on major series including working alongside David Attenborough filming Life of Birds, The Life of Mammals and many programmes in the Natural World series. We discuss the importance of nature connection, biomimicry, why we need to introduce and educate the next generation, and also how audio-visual connection to nature through our TVs and devices is a positive thing and how we could take this one step further and introduce it into our built environment. “If you see something and understand it, then you care about it, then you might do something to protect it and encourage other people to do the same.” The messaging, inspiration and education you experience through wildlife films inspire people, and footage of birds in flight for instance has a calming effect as well.

Michael regales us with tales of animals, where he has filmed birds of paradise in New Guinea, Grizzly bears in Alaska, Termites in Namibia, Caribou migration, Polar Bears and more. He has spent many hours, up close and personal, feeling the heartbeat of a bird as it sits in his hand, feeling the strength of it, studying the intricacies of plumage which adapted to that way of life, their piercing eyes, incisive bills which continue to fascinate him: “every species is so special, they are all so different, so supremely adapted to where they live.”

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Feeling Alive

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Feeling Alive

As many of our listeners know, the concept of Biophilic Design brings our contact with nature closer into our lives in the built environment, whether that’s at home, work, hospitals, schools or our cities. In our podcasts we speak to people whose life’s work has been to design and work with nature and also to understand more deeply how and why our connection with nature is so profound and why it has a positive impact it has on us. The underlying factor is our inheritance from our ancestors, how for hundreds of thousands of years we lived outside, close to nature. We are still dependent on nature for our food, air, water, life.

In this podcast, we speak with Mary Reynolds Thompson, founder of Live Your Wild Soul Story, and who is an award-winning author, internationally recognized speaker, and a pioneer in the spiritual ecology movement, her focus is on the transformative power of landscape archetypes and nature metaphors to reveal our true purpose and right relationship with the planet. We discuss how the way we are living now alienates us from real life, from the living planet, from each other, and from our own authenticity. It’s not just a philosophy, it's proven that time in nature really heals you emotionally, psychologically, and physically, the effects are lasting – it has an accumulative benefit, extending into the stresses of the week. Therefore, simply put, the more connected we are to nature the happier we are.

“It’s an unfolding comfort, we feel the warmth or cold of the earth, almost like the heartbeat of the mother, security and happiness. For all of human history we lived outside, it’s part of our lineage, and we don’t just cut it off. We don’t lose that desire.” Mary goes on to describe a concept, Shadow wild – this disconnection which leaves such a gaping chasm that we tend to want to fill it with whatever is at hand because we want to feel alive (Joseph Campbell, the mythologist said – more than anything humans want to feel alive, and most of us feel alive when we are outside in the natural world.

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Designing Climate Change Resilience

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Designing Climate Change Resilience

Nature is our key to solving the climate crisis, if we reconnect people with nature, bring nature and natural elements closer to people then everything is more joined up. Better decisions will be made. Dom Higgins, head of Health and Education for the Wildlife Trusts. We speak about Nature connectedness, biodiversity, purpose, people, place, Cone Snails and the new Natural History GCSE… among other things. We need to give nature a chance, we might be too late to prevent climate change, but we can mitigate against the challenges such as cooling cities, carbon sinks, cleaning our air, and ecosystems that can mitigate the issues. We need people to take action, so we need to hear it on the Stock Exchange, Factories, taxis, it should be the business of everybody.

We talk about how we need active environments, and how it goes back to when we were hunter-gatherers. If you remove people inside and then we remain stationary, then we stress. We should be outside, away from artificial lights and all the accoutrements of the modern-day office (unless it has biophilic design woven into its very fabric). Take anyone away from connecting with nature and we get chronic stress. The disconnection detrimentally affects us physically and mentally.

We discuss this nature-connectedness, that feeling of understanding what is going on in the world, that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. We need that daily thought, that sense of knowing that everything has a place, and is connected back to everything else. This is our life-support system essentially. If we don’t design with that sense at our core, then our planet and our health are doomed. If you don’t have that feeling, that sense of connectedness with nature innate within you, then the decisions being made around the world are skewed, everything from creating fair and sustainable employment to the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe. It has consequences. And not good ones.

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