What is biophilic design?

Biophilic design is all about bringing the outside in. But it's also much more than that. Open your windows and have a listen!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark and there's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there. And
you put the two of us together. Um, put a
lit on the jar. Maybe poke some holes in the

(00:24):
top for air, put a bladed grass in there. Yeah,
maybe some cotton balls. Yep, cotton balls with um what
do they used to knock knock things out with cotton balls?
I don't know. From all, I'm sure, uh, and you've
got stuff you should know. I'm thinking of that scene
from E. T mm hmm where he brings the frogs

(00:47):
back to life. Yeah, he liberates the frogs, right, yeah, yeah,
And I think he like kisses a girl because et
is watching like a soap opera or an old bromance movie.
I can't remember, but great, it is a good movie.
I saw it not too long ago, and I'm like, wow,
this is really good. They also like the whole free

(01:08):
range kids thing. Man, those were the days. Huh. Yeah,
I mean we're on the border of showing that to
my daughter, who's you know, like five and a half.
And Emily it's like, you think she's ready for E t.
I said, well, I mean it, when when do we
want her to see the saddest movie ever? I mean,
that's kind of the question. It's just rather heartbreaking. Yeah,

(01:28):
you should show her et the first few minutes of Bambi,
the first twenty minutes of UP, just all all right,
all one after each other, and some horribleectually. Oh, she
can handle the first part of UP. She can handle.
E t all bat, I can't handle it. I know,
That's what I'm saying. I think the older you get,
the harder it is, you know. I agreed. Uh So

(01:48):
I got a little update on something by the way,
and I posted this to the Stuff you Should Know
Army page as breaking news yesterday. But I figured the
world at large should know that as of yesterday, my friend,
I'm no longer a squatter. Oh congratulations. Wow, then the
long national nightmares come doing. Yep. We uh walked to

(02:13):
check up to my County of Residents and buzzed a lady.
She came down to the lobby and picked it up, right.
Are you sure it was the lady who needed it? Well, no,
but she was going to give it to the person
who did need it. But they're just not allowing people
in the county buildings. But that was it, So it's done.

(02:34):
I mean all this came from the squatting started in
the squatting episode, which was like ten years old at least,
where you talking about house for fifteen years and you
had like a little plot of land that you were
you had been using and as we demonstrated in the episode,
like you technically had some sort of weird legal claim
to it. Now, Chuck, I mean, I think I remember saying, like,

(02:55):
it's not entirely clear that that technique even works. It's
just if there is a yeah, if there is a
legal technique that might work, it's that and you proved it,
right man, that's some serious, long term dedication to that episode. Well,
I just slight correction. I didn't get it through squatters

(03:15):
rights though. That really had nothing to do with it.
Oh what did it have to do with It had
to do with um County red tape and mumbo jumbo
and some back taxes and you know, it just takes.
I mean it took. It probably took five years from
the point where we engaged a real estate lawyer help
us out with it. Like that's how long it took

(03:36):
to cut through that red tape. Wow, that's a lot
of red tape. When you bring a lawyer in to
get a piece of land you're squatting on, there's a
lot of red tape around it. Yeah, but the lawyer
it wasn't like a ton of work, so that didn't
cost that much money in the back taxes was not
that much money. So it wasn't like a very expensive affair.
But we got it in the nick of time too,
because I just found out that Georgia Power is they're

(04:00):
bearing power lines in our neighborhood and they had contacted
the county about that piece of land to like put
a bunch of equipment on last week. Wow. That is yeah, amazing.
So no longer a squatter. Wow, everything's coming up chuck today.
It is no longer a squatter and uh as of

(04:22):
coming up very soon. But by the time this comes out,
you will be half a century old as well. Oh yeah, yeah,
so what happened? Yeah, happy birthday, thank you man. Crazy. Yeah,
the big five zero that only comes once twice three
times in a person's life, you know. Yeah, forty was
kind of like alright, middle age, but fifty is like,

(04:42):
oh boy, I'm going downhill. How does it feel. I mean,
I don't really care. I'm the same person, but it's
definitely a number to be reckoned with some mentally. You know,
I'll ask you in a few years and we'll see
what you say. Okay, that's fine. I should probably just
I should probably just fill in the joke grave that

(05:05):
I dug for you in that squatted land as a
surprise for your birthday. Now that, now that you say that,
I didn't realize you were having any kind of struggle
with fifty. But no, I'm not. It's not it's fine.
It's just when you see it on paper, it's like,
oh boy, okay, who's that. Well that's good because I
really didn't feel like going to the trouble of filling
it back in, and when I say, see it on paper,

(05:25):
I've just I've been writing the number fifty everywhere. Right. Well,
I'm glad we had all these talks because it turns
out that our episode on biophilic design could have been
a little thin otherwise. Chuck. Yeah, I mean, it's not
the most robust episode, but it was kind of fell
between shorty and full length. I think, yeah, no, well,

(05:46):
we'll make some hay out of it, and it's actually
one of those things like UM, we talked, we touched
on it a little bit and our How Environmental Psychology
Works episode from October of two thousand nineteen, not too
long ago, because they definitely definitely tied to other UM.
But biophilic design is certainly its own thing. And if
you've been to like a restaurant or a hotel or

(06:08):
something pre pandemic, I should say, UM, and you saw
that they have like some vines growing on a wall,
or some succulents growing on a wall, or there's you
know a lot more natural lighting than there used to be,
or anything like that. You have been in an area
where there is some biophilic design going on exactly. And

(06:30):
we should point out that a lot of this material
comes from a gentleman. I mean, they're they're a handful
of people that sort of helped pioneer this idea. And
one of them is Steven R. Kellert, who is a
very much a revered professor at Yale of social ecology
at the Yale School of Forestry, which I didn't even

(06:51):
know existed at Yale. Yeah, Yale School of Forestry and
Environmental Studies. And UM I'm trying to see. I think
he just passed away a few years ago, but November seven,
I'm not sure the year though, Yeah, that's what's looking for.
He was definitely one of the champions of biophilic design. Yeah,
so I think I get the impression that he was
one of the ones who really tried to connect science

(07:14):
to that that type of design UM, because there is like,
you know, it is extremely trendy right now, like I
was saying, but there's a real push toward um, you know,
backing up the assertions that this is actually good for us,
This type of design is good for us with peer
reviewed studies, so you know, hats off to them for

(07:34):
doing that too. Yeah, I think he passed away four
years ago. But that's a good point. It's one thing
to say plants are nice in the house, and it's
another thing to say a design concept can actually improve
your health and well being, which is what we're talking about.
I guess we should say what it is, right, Yeah. Yeah.

(07:54):
Biophilic design is based on this idea that we humans
have evolved, um, have millions and millions of years of
evolution behind us, and that most of the evolution took
place in the outdoors or at least in in deep
connection with nature. And it was only recently. Some people
mark the First Industrial Revolution in Manchester as the real

(08:17):
dividing line, but it was only recently that we kind
of transitioned away from that deep connection with nature that
took place on like a daily basis, and that as
a result, we've kind of suffered. And that biophilic design
seas to kind of say, well, we you know, we're
already kind of stuck in our buildings, were stuck in
our work life, but let's figure out how to incorporate

(08:39):
nature into that that way of living so that we
can reconnect with it because we really do need it. Yeah.
I think I've seen a couple of studies that verify this,
that say that humans generally spend about nine of their
time indoors now, And like you said, that there was
as far as that statistic goes, that is very very

(09:01):
recent if you look at it relative to how long
humans have been around, you know, yeah, yeah, I mean so,
so there's this idea that if if we have literally
evolved to to gain sustenance and an ability to thrive
from being connected with nature, the converse of that is
that if you take people away from that and stick

(09:24):
them into highly artificial built environments like an office building
eight or ten hours a day, five days a week,
fifty weeks a year, they're going to start to suffer
and deteriorate mentally and physically. And that's kind of the
basis of this concept, is like, okay, if you if
we've got to work like that, let's work more in

(09:44):
conjunction with nature. Yeah, And there's a couple of cool
quotes here from you know, it's it's nothing new that
people understand that being among nature is, you know, a
generally sort of more pleasing way to live. But if
he could read from uh, the great Ralph Waldo Emerson

(10:05):
almost said thorough you could they were a weird pair,
you know what I mean? Yeah, which reminds me, I
think we have a literary correction on today's episode. Oh boy, wow,
everything's just coming together, it is. But he wrote in
eight second series essays and this isn't you know, the
mid eighteen hundreds, Only as far as the masters of

(10:27):
the world have called in nature to their aid, can
they reach the height of magnificence. This is the meaning
of their hanging gardens Villa's garden, houses, island islands, parks,
and preserves. So I mean he was kind of straight
up saying it in the mid eighteen hundreds that like,
we can only peak as people when we are surrounded

(10:48):
by nature as much as we can be. And that's
why even back then, I guess they were trying to
bring the outside in and Emerson was like, right, guys.
And for a long time people were like, yeah, of course,
why would you say that, you're weirdo. And then by
about the mid twentieth century, Uh, the captains of industry
at the time said you know what, Yeah, they said,

(11:09):
nuts to the transcendentalists. We're going a completely opposite direction,
and we're going to show just how much we've conquered nature.
We're gonna do nothing but like straight lines and right
angles and um. You know, when the oil embargo comes
along in the seventies, we're going to decree by government
mandate that buildings have to be so tightly sealed that

(11:30):
not a drop of air can possibly escape them. Uh.
And everything is going to be totally artificial and controlled,
including the lighting and everything. Um. And we're going to
show that we've conquered nature. We don't even need nature.
And then in very short order, within just a few decades,
people started to be like, I can't, I can't live
like this. Um, I didn't see anything directly connected to it,

(11:53):
but I would hazard a really you know, armchair anecdotal
gap that you could trace a lot of the weird
things that people do, like um, mass shootings and office
spaces and workplaces and things like that to the environment
a lot more than people have directly have have traced directly,

(12:17):
I'll bet you could. I agree, it's a total guess,
but from what I can tell, that seems to be
largely in conjunction with a lot of the depth that
people have lent to biophilic design investigations. So that's fine.
I think it could be a factor for sure. Uh.
There was another gentleman the sixties named Eric from that

(12:39):
sort of introduced in the you know, twentieth century this
idea of biophilia. But I think it was Edward O.
Wilson who he's kind of known as the you know,
the twenty one century Darwin. He's a biologist and a
writer and a philosopher and an aunt specialist. But he
wrote a book in nineteen four called biophila philia, and

(13:01):
I think that was where I think it's biophilia. I
didn't see an eye in that case, but I'm pretty
sure it's okay. Sorry, go ahead. I didn't mean it
correct well necessarily I know that know it may be,
but either way, that was I think. I think he
was the person who coined the term. That's the first
use of it I actually saw of that word. Yeah,
it's biophilia, like for love of life, for love of

(13:23):
living things basically. And I think Edward O. Wilson deserves
his own episode. He was an interesting dude um as
a boy, Chuck. I read an anecdote about him. As
a boy. He happened to be living in like I think,
around New Orleans when the first fire ants showed up
to North America. They washed ashore somehow, I think from

(13:46):
ballast or something like that, from a ship's a ship's ballast.
And as like an eleven year old boy, he was
smart enough to recognize that they were something new or
different and describe them scientifically. I think he was the
first person to describe your ants in North America as
an eleven year old kid, I mean, if your specialty
in your life, I mean, you had a lot of passions,

(14:07):
but if your main life fashion is ants, then you're
pretty cool in my book. Ye. So this whole theory
of biophilia basically says what we were saying. What biophilic
design is based on, that that humans evolved to get
their cues and their happiness and their well being and
our our ability to thrive from our natural settings UM,

(14:28):
and that we just have like a deep need to
connect with nature, and that when we don't, bad things
can happen basically to our well being, even things we
don't necessarily put our finger on as being the result
of not being connected to nature. But it's still it
still is, it's still what the underlying thing is. And
apparently biophilic design, as far as architecture and interior design go, UM,

(14:54):
it finds its roots a little more even even more
recently than UM than Edward or wils And it actually
comes out of the nineties when there was a movement
to change zoo enclosures to make them more naturally that
that's that's where this whole movement of UM living plant
walls at your local Hyatt hotel lobby comes from zoo enclosures,

(15:18):
which is really kind of eye opening when you realize
that's the basis of it. I think that's a great
place for a medium cliffhanger. Okay, I'll take medium today.
All right, we'll be right back after this. Alright, So

(15:53):
medium cliffhanger, you introduce the idea that it was really
in the nineties when um they started to redo zoo
and closures where this idea for humans sprung up. And
I guess the only cliffhang areas who kind of helped
lead that charge. And it's a psychologist name Judith here Wagon.
I would say here Wagan, but uh, in America, it's

(16:15):
probably here Wagon. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. At the at
the Seattle Zoo, right, Yeah, she was a graduate student,
and this was I can't believe this was the nineties
and not the sixties, but I guess it took a
while before we started saying and this wasn't every zoo,
but there were still a lot of zoos then that
you know, would keep a gorilla and a monkey in

(16:37):
a in a cage. And they sat up and people
like Judah said, you know what, why don't we make
this more like their habitat because they're experiencing zookosis they're fighting,
they're not social, they're not reproducing. That's a big problem.
And out of that was born the same idea for humans,
which is funny that it took so long from the

(16:58):
nineties to kind of really take hold more with humans
because we called it inhumane for animals, but for us.
I guess it was just fine. Maybe they just didn't
see the connection. Yeah, I suppose they didn't, because the
way that they changed the zoo animals enclosures for the
better was to make them much more like their natural habitat.
And you know, the animals that live at the zoo

(17:20):
are far more recently removed from their natural habitats, so
we can imagine them in a grassland with some trees
like a savannah, or living among antelope or something like that.
All of these techniques that they brought together to make
their there the places where they lived at zoos a
lot more like the ecosystems that they lived in um

(17:40):
back home. UM. When you when you think of humans,
you don't think of us living on savannahs or grasslands.
But that's the very basis of this idea, this theory
of biophilia, is that that's where we evolved on the savannah,
these big open grassy meadows with lots of trees and
probably some water somewhere trickling by just basically everything that

(18:03):
any human alive thinks of as an idyllic outdoor place.
That that's the kind of setting that we evolved in,
and that that's the kind of habitat that we need
to interact with two just as much as zoo animals does.
And it's like our technology made us forget that we're animals.
What happened, you know what I'm saying, Like we we
lost that memory, And so I think that's why it

(18:24):
wasn't the opposite like, oh, we need to make a
better habitat for humans and then make it for zoo animals.
It was the opposite way around, because we don't think
of ourselves as as animals any longer. Yeah, I think
we thought our natural habitat is the building, you know exactly.
So it goes to step further though, Like it's much
more than just put in some plants or a fountain

(18:46):
that makes a nice trickling sound. They really want to
get into sort of the evolutionary aspect of the whole thing,
and that, uh, if it was a benefit evolutionarily over
time over the millennia. Then that's what's going to contribute
to the actual health and well being. So it can't

(19:06):
be It had to be an actual thing that really
improved us for you know, thousands or millions of years,
not just something that maybe went away like or like
a desert habitat or something like that. It had to
be something in order to you know, for the science
to work, and we'll get to that, something that really
contributed as we evolved to our well being. Yeah. So,

(19:29):
like again we come back to that savannah hypothesis which um,
which means that if you're designing something that kind of
seeks to emulate a savannah, well, there's lots of high
open spaces, so you might have like a really soaring atrium,
lots of trees that you can just put some trees
into that atrium. Again, a little bit of a water feature. Um.

(19:49):
One of the other big things that's kind of like
a foundation of biophilic design is it's like you're saying
you can just put a water feature in and put
a tree in and call it a day. Like there
actually needs to be thought into how these things interact
and form a cohesive whole. You know, you don't you
you want to see the forest, not the trees when
you're creating biophilic design, and that that they kind of

(20:12):
have to to fit together correctly in an intuitive way
or else that in eight sense that evolved in the savannah,
that's lodged in all of our brains. Well, no, like
this is fake and it probably won't have a benefit
for us, and it might even have a negative benefit
if it's not done correctly. Yeah, Like the idea is
to create an indoor ecosystem that sort of mimics the

(20:36):
outdoors in a lot of ways. Like the the it's bigger,
the whole is bigger than the sum of its part.
If you really want the individual to have a genuine,
you know, improvement in their health and well being. And
like I said, not just hey, this bank put a
palm tree in the corner, right, isn't it? Isn't it
nice to look at? Yeah? But I mean that's something.

(20:58):
It's better than nothing. But I think the fact that
seeing a potted plant in a place like a bank,
even back in the mid century was not weird or jarring,
like it just looked like, yeah, of course you would
do that. There is this kind of like early trace
evidence of like this kind of like a cry for help, like, hey,

(21:18):
we we need something, We need something natural in here. Um,
even a fake potted plant to fool us into thinking
that that there's some sort of nature here. But yeah,
biophilic design basically says, forget your potted plant, Like, we
need like a whole planning, whole cropping, a whole little
um like a garden, like a glade, something that that

(21:40):
looks natural, not just a single plant in a pot
in a corner. That's not good enough. Yeah, and sort
of one of the third tenants is that you have
to kind of engage and interact with this. Uh, there's
the idea that biophilia is what's known as a weak
biological tendency instead of a hardwired in and that means

(22:02):
if it's a weak one, that means that you gotta
work on it and it has to be nurtured. And
you know, maybe this could be employed like instead of Uh,
a plant wall is very nice, but what's even better
is a hallway lined with plants that you have to
literally walk through and interact with. Yeah. Like, the idea
behind this kind of foundational concept is that if you're

(22:25):
really creating a biophilically designed UM workplace for your employees.
UM putting you know, everything you got into the foyer
or the atrium or where the reception desk is. It's
gonna wow the people who come through the doors, but
when they pass through, they're entering just a normal office

(22:46):
and it loses all of its impact. Like that receptionist
is gonna be working like gangbusters and probably have the
best life they possibly could, but everybody else who works there,
who just passes through the lobby is not going to
really benefit from it. It needs to be kind of
constant and UM. It can be ephemeral, like it can

(23:07):
be kind of fleeting or passing, but there needs to
be like the constant possibility of fleeting and ephemeral contact
with nature, so that over the course of an entire
day it was virtually constant. It just came in different
forms that were kind of fleeting. A good example of
this is like, UM, the shadows of something changing in

(23:28):
the office space as the day progresses. That's ephemeral, that's fleeting,
but UM, there's still shadows even though they're in different places,
in different sizes and shapes and angles throughout the day.
The shadows are still there all day, and but they change,
and that we feed on. That is kind of the
basis of biophilic design, that that has an effect on

(23:48):
us a positive one, to be able to see that
during the day. Yeah, And I think the idea too
is there's also you know, if you are surrounded by
or in a in a building that employs biophilic design,
you're you're developing an emotional attachment to a place you
might not ordinarily develop an attachment to. And I think

(24:09):
anyone who's ever walked through, uh, just a sort of
a standard gross office like we used to work in,
like our office. We haven't been in it for a while,
but it's kind of cool because we have this huge,
huge bank of windows, which is nice, and a lot
of people have plants, which is nice. But we've been
some bad offices over the years, so bad like just
straight nothing but marble, like barely any plants. It's just

(24:32):
bad news. And then like the actual offices were just
divided up with like high high sight lines that you
have to like kind of stand on your tiptoes. Just
bad news for sure, for sure. So walking through something
like that, and then the experience you have emotionally of
when you're like at a botanical garden and you're walking
through a greenhouse. It's just I mean, I don't maybe

(24:56):
there are people that don't like things like that, but
it's hard to imagine some body walking through one of
these lush, sort of humid greenhouses that's just cut, you know,
the good ones. It's it's just packed with stuff everywhere,
and you hear water running and like plants are brushing
up against you as you move. I don't know many
people would just be like, no, thanks, yea out there sure,

(25:20):
I mean, I'm sure there are people out there, and
there's plenty people that don't like to go camping or
be in the woods and stuff like that, but I'd
say even a lot of those people would enjoy a
greenhouse experience, right yeah, or no, or at the very
least would enjoy prefer a lobby that has that's well
done with biophilic designed to one that's just sterile. And

(25:41):
and you know, Norwegian like, I think they're kind of
leading the charge on a lot of this. Yeah, weirdly
they are, for sure, but check so, I mean we
kind of reach now the reason why a lot of
the big tech companies are leading the way and working
with UM architect your firms and design firms that are

(26:02):
pushing biophilic design on them. Is that they're basically trying
to subliminally trick you into liking work, right Like you're
like they want you to form a place attachment to
their office so that you stay there more, you have
fewer sick days, you do more while you're there, you
just enjoy yourself there. And there's really kind of two

(26:23):
ways of looking at big corporations getting into biophilic design.
And one is that you're you're being manipulated to increase
your productivity, like deep, deeply manipulated on an evolutionary almost
genetic level, or that you have to be at work anyway,
and they're trying to make it as pleasant as possible
for you. I guess it just depends on whether you're

(26:44):
like a glass half full or half empty kind of person.
But those are the two interpretations of huge companies getting
into biophilic design. And and I'm all of them have
like UM, Facebook's campus in Menlo Park, the Googleplex, UM
Microsoft's office and Redmond uh Coppertino, Apple's big old Donut UFO,

(27:06):
all of them have the Amazon's offices. I think they're
called Bezos's Balls downtown in Seattle. That's what they call
them that I read. Um, it proved me wrong. Seattle
proved me wrong. Uh. The all of them are designed
with biophilic design right now. Yeah, I think you'd have
to be fairly cynical when an effort is made to

(27:30):
bring a more calming, healthful environment to be like, yeah,
I see what they're doing here. They're just manipulating me.
I see. Yeah, for real, who would think that? Who
would think that way? You're not like that at all. Right,
So some of the ways that you can, uh, I
mean they're sort of indirect and direct ways of doing this.

(27:51):
Obviously we talked about plants. Um. Light is a big,
big one, UM, and that that first office we had
years ago in Buckhead, I think that's what you're talking about.
Our cubicle walls were so high it was like it
was stifling and no light natural light would come in.
I think there were like there were some offices on

(28:13):
the outside, so if you had an office, maybe you
had a window, but otherwise you were just counting on
fluorescent lights above your head, which are the worst. I
think we should do a shorty unfluorescent lighting at some point.
It would be kind of cool. But water features are
always great, the sounds of running water, the visual appeal
of running water. I agree, But I feel like there

(28:33):
could be too much. Like I think that the sound
of water in particular is supposed to be something that
we here in passing or at a distance. Like I
think if you just heard water trickling all day long,
kind of loudly, it might drive you a little bit crazy,
you think, I think. So that's just my take on it.
I would dig it, but you have to you know,

(28:56):
you might just have to be too much right now,
It's definitely that's definitely part of it. But now, I like,
I love the sound of water. Two I find extremely relaxing.
I just think it could be overdone, is what I mean. Alright,
I hear you. Um, Like these are sort of the obvious,
real natural things that you can bring in, you know,
open windows occasionally to get like real fresh air in there. Yeah.

(29:17):
One of the things I saw, Chuck was was um
natural ventilation. And I'm sorry, Like I this is a
bit of a thing to me, Like, I am totally
fascinated by how this this fits into this. What do
you mean So the idea that that you know, the
buildings of yesteryear, unfortunately that a lot of us still
work in, were sealed off purposely to make them more

(29:39):
energy efficient, but that all of the air that passes
through is very filtered and artificial and there's nothing coming
in from the outside. Biophilic design says, no, no, no,
don't do that, Like go back to natural ventilation. Like
you're gonna have lower energy costs, You're gonna have pleasant
breezes blowing through, You're gonna have change is in temperature

(30:00):
that are much more natural, which sounds good, but in practice,
it's like, well, what about your what about your computer hardware?
There's a lot of humidity in the air too, right,
what effect is that can have on all of your
employees computers or the the servers in the basement or whatever.
Um or you know, what about when it's cold out
do you leave the doors open? Like what do you

(30:21):
do about it during the winter time? And then um
also in the spring? What about your employees who have
seasonal allergies? So like I have, Like I totally get
the need for that, but that is the one part
of biophilic design that. I'm like, this is the thing
that's most at odds with with modern office buildings, the air,

(30:43):
like like natural air versus you know, artificially treated air.
I don't know how they're figuring that out, and I
couldn't find a lot on it, but I'm fascinated by
that one. I wonder if it's more like it's not
completely one or the other. Like you have your h
VEC system and everything still, but when the weather agrees,

(31:03):
you can open your windows like they're not hermetically sealed
like most offices. Yeah, okay, I saw that there was
a it's called a mixed system where you're using both
and yeah, it depends on wind. But but then you know,
if it's really cold out or whatever, does everybody's have
to be like it's super artificial inside for this the
next few months and then maybe it'll get nice again.
I'm just there's gotta be a way to conquer that,

(31:25):
I think. Yeah, So, I mean to me, what fascinates
uh me about this whole thing is I've always been
a nature guy, so it's it's obvious to bring in
plants and water and stuff like that. I think the
more indirect things are really fascinating. Uh. There's this place
in Portugal. It's I think there are a bunch of them.

(31:47):
They're called Second Home. It's a coworking space, but this
one in Portugal specifically is well known for having more
than two thousand plants. So that's sort of the obvious one.
But they also just in their design, they don't have
any straight lines in the office because there are no
straight lines in nature rarely. Uh. They don't have matching

(32:09):
uh office chairs and desks and things like that because
there's variety of nature, so they'll just have like just
different chairs everywhere. And like actual they call it fractal
complexity that you find in nature in different shapes of things. Uh.
And I don't think that's the kind of thing where
someone would walk in and say, look at all these

(32:29):
different office chairs, I feel so alive. But I think
it's just little things like that kind of contribute to
the whole as working as a part of that you know,
emotional and I guess mental ecosystem. Yes, that's exactly the point.
So like, um, what is the dude's name who passed? Who? Uh? Kellert? Yeah,

(32:52):
Dr Keller. It was kind of breaking it down into
two things one's direct experience of nature, and then the
stuff you're talking about falls under the umbrella of indirect
experience of nature, kind of like um being worked on
subliminally by things like curve shapes and fractal patterns, or

(33:14):
using like stone stone flooring overlight, highly artificial UM carpet
or something like that, or granite countertops is a way
of evoking nature because it is still granted, it's just
that we've kind of um carved it into the shape
that we that isn't natural. There's lots of straight lines,
usually with a granite countertop, but it's still a natural material.

(33:36):
It's still evokes nature. UM. There's also like using artificial
light that's designed to kind of change throughout the course
of the day. UM. That's another way to kind of
indirectly experienced nature, just kind of using suggestions and tricks.
This stuff you wouldn't put your finger on and be
like nature, but it's still having that biophilic impact on you.

(34:01):
Although a lot of what I saw as far as
researching is that some of the leaders in this space
kind of say, like you know, nuts to artificial light,
get as much like real light in the space as
you possibly can from what I saw that was light.
That was like the number one thing is is natural light,
like lighting natural light in Yeah. The other thing that

(34:21):
I think is really cool is wayfinding, like how a
building is laid out as far as you know. Usually
it's like you're walking down a straight hall, you turn
left to go down another straight hall. But if they
can mimic nature a little bit more and have hallways
that are a little more meandering. Um, I mean, you
gotta get where you need to go, sure, but if

(34:44):
it's done in a more natural way, like meander to
a central point which might be the oasis or something
like that, I think that's a really cool way to
bring it out. Yeah, we talked a lot about that
in the Environmental Psychology episode, but we we talked about
it from a different perspective where they would use tricks
and techniques to keep you on a path rather than
letting you wander off to places you weren't supposed to be.

(35:06):
That was part of of wayfinding for sure. But yeah,
that's a fascinating topic period. Like whenever I go to
a like a hospital that's really smartly laid out and
you can really Hospitals are notorious for people getting lost
and not be able to find where you need to go,
and if you go to one that has done it right,
it's it's really cool to think about how much effort

(35:28):
goes into that. Yeah. Yeah, I love that too. That
was one of my favorite parts of that episode. And
I like this too. But it's just with biophilic design.
It's like, you know, take a left by the mud
pools and then you know, when you run into the
pack of wild boars, turned back around because you've gone
too far. Yeah, go by the mud pools and say

(35:48):
hi to Gary from a county. He sits in those
crazy for the mud pools. We can never get Gary
out of here. Should we take a break and talk
about the science. Uh? I, I'm just trying to see
if I had anymore because there was a lot of
indirect and direct experiences of nature. But yeah, I guess

(36:09):
that's it. Okay, sure, In other words, let's do it. Oh,

(36:34):
I did have one chuck now that we're back. Um.
It was one of the direct experiences of nature from
Dr Kellert's was weather. So my idea for biophilic design
would be to put to paste cotton balls onto a
piece of construction paper. That's cut out in the shape
of a cloud. Put those on the walls here there,

(36:56):
that's the thing that you were trying to think of. Yes, yeah,
that was the thing I decided was worth restating after
the break. No, man, I love a little cotton ball clouds.
Love them. Plus they're cotton too, so it's even more
natural because it's a natural material evoking a different part
of nature. It's you want to make your employees headspin

(37:17):
with productivity, Make cotton ball clouds and put those on
the wall and you could use it as a little
pillow during your break time. Very nice. So science, Um,
this is all well and good and can be kind
of hippie dippy if you think about it. But is
there actual science behind this? And it appears that there

(37:39):
is in most cases there's There's been a lot of studies. Um.
I found a couple a couple of different ones, not
in this article, but one was in twenty nineteen and Denmark.
Kids who had been exposed to greenery had less mental
health problems later in life. There were a couple of
studies in Norway that found that subjects who did reading

(38:02):
an attention based tasks surrounded by plants and greenery improve
their scores over time. And there's a lot of talk about,
um what's called attention restoration theory, which is if you're
staring at a screen all day, even taking a minute
to go stare out a window at a tree can

(38:24):
restore you a little bit. I thought of a really
good analogy for this, if I do say so myself.
You know those grounding rods that we put into the
ground outside of our houses and all of our our
electrical appliances are connected to it, and it allows we
we discharge the excess electricity into the ground where it dissipates.
I think that's kind of what nature does to us,

(38:46):
whether it's gazing out a window or going out in
the nature. Um, we're like un unburdening ourselves with all
of the just crud that has gathered up and the
tension that's gathered from staring at that screen or thinking
or over exerting ourselves. We like are able to disperse
it into nature, and nature is a big enough reservoir

(39:06):
to accept it and we feel better afterward. I think
that's kind of close to what we're doing. Yeah, I
wonder if we're ever going to find a mechanism for
how that actually happens, or is it the opposite where
we're actually depleted and then seeing nature recharges us. It's
you know, it's two different, two different versions. Well, I mean,

(39:27):
I think the science does back it up. There was
another study from Northwestern and that found that people who
are exposed to natural light more during the workday got
an additional forty six minutes of sleep at night. So
it's not just like improved work productivity and happy feelings,
it's like you're getting solid sleep at night. Yeah. And
I mean like there's just unequivally, unequivocally a lot of

(39:48):
science to back it up, including on a physiological level,
things like, um, there we we have lower levels of cortisol,
our heart rates are lowered. UM. We we just generally
are physically better off. Um when we have things like
a good view of nature or where there's breezes or
where especially I saw um, where we're exposed to even

(40:10):
indirect sunlight throughout the day. That has an enormous impact
on on our sense of well being. Uh, as far
as things like anxiety and depression go as well. Um.
So there's a lot of science to back it up.
It's it's what I saw kind of how Keller put
it is. There seems to be this um like architecture

(40:32):
and design wants to figure out how to take this
idea and package it so that they can just sell
it everywhere as easy as possible. That's just true with
all industry and business. Whenever somebody comes up with a
really good idea, they want to figure out how to
mass produce it. It's the American way, right um and
Keller it was basically saying like there's a real um

(40:56):
danger in basically laying this out and it's ablishing exactly
how to do this because people will just kind of
co modify, package it and it will lose it Like
that doesn't that's not how biophilic design actually works. Instead,
here are the principles of it. Figure out how to
make it work in harmony with a lot of what's
called informational richness. So there's a lot going on, but

(41:19):
not too much because if it's too busy, you're too noisy,
then now you've got problems because you have a bunch
of distracted employees um or a bunch of distracted customers. Whoever,
there's a lot of balance. But these guys who kind
of created this field and then again backed it up
with science, kind of laid out the foundation of it
and said, now it's up to you, the designer, to
figure it out on each different case. Don't try to

(41:41):
package it because you're going to lose this. Uh if
we if we try to co modify it. Interesting. Yeah,
I thought it is. But at the same time it's
it's a really good um. It was very wise of
him to include that, you know. Yeah, there was one
more study I wanted to mention, because it's not just
in the workplace, but recuperating in the hospital is actually

(42:03):
this is where it can really really help people. Um
In the National Institutes of Health published a study that
found that people recuperating after surgery had shorter stays in
the hospital overall and needed less pain meds, even if
just simply they had a garden view as opposed to
some other credit view like a brick wall or a
parking lot. Yeah, Roger ulric Um, we talked him in

(42:26):
the Environmental Psychology episode two, I think because that was
like that basically laid the groundwork for the science backing
up biophilic design. Was that first step, Yeah, well, what
can people do at home? There's a law you can
do at home. You can get yourself mud pool and
some wild boards. That's a good first step. Lookout for Gary.

(42:46):
Get that really famous banana leaf print wallpaper. Put it
everywhere you can. It's just some cotton balls and some
construction paper. UM. One thing that that they figured out,
there's this company called bright Green or Tarrapin bright Green.
They're kind of a leader in the field. Um. They
figured out that one of the things that that is

(43:07):
an element of biophilic design is something called a refuge
where your back is covered or protected, and then you
have something overhead, kind of low overhead. So think about
how like when you're in a restaurant and you're at
a high backed booth that's up against a corner that's
like this the best it is. It's the best seat
in the house. The mafia can't get you right or

(43:28):
you're you know, you're sitting um, you know, against with
with nothing but like a wall or some shrubs or
something behind you, and there's like a an umbrella at
a cafe overhead. UM like a little place a quiet
spot for you. There's advice that you should set up
a place like that at your home. It could be
a high wingback chair or something by a fireplace, just

(43:49):
a place where you feel protected but also very cozy too. Yeah.
I love that idea because I'm I'm not crazy about it,
but I always I and sit with my back against
wall if I can. But it's not like you know,
I have to or else I'll, you know, freak out
Like you've got Georgia power looking for you now. So

(44:09):
I would definitely watch my back if I were you. Two.
Another thing to do, obviously is plants inside your home,
but not just like think about like we said earlier,
about the ecosystem, how these plants work together, and groupings
of plants and uh form a little habitat if you can,
and do a little bit of research about what plants

(44:29):
like each other and pair those little buddies together. Yeah, um,
that's a big one. But yeah, even if it is
just a couple of plants to start, you don't don't wait.
Just start buying plants and bringing them into your house now.
And also learn how to take care of your plants,
because plants can be really easy to take care of
if you just know what they need and and and
you will save a lot of plant lives. And a

(44:50):
lot of time and trouble for yourself. Um, agreed. And
then the of you is another easy thing that people
can do, depending on where you live. Of Um, if
you have for some reason covered up your outdoor windows
with a bookcase, move the bookcase so that you could
look out the window. Um. One of the basis of

(45:12):
that Savannah hypothesis is that we evolved to relax or
be relaxed by a long range view, long long what's
it called the thousand range there? Yeah, that feels good,
But that's why when you're doing that, you are zoned out.

(45:32):
You're kind of in a zen trance like state. That's
what you're doing. This is kind of like, well, when
we're looking at our computers or our phones or something
like that, we're doing the opposite of that. So having
a nice view what's called a prospect as far as
um uh biophilic designers are concerned, that can really have
a refreshing, restorative effect on us. Is even physically on

(45:53):
our eyeballs. I love it. Yeah, I mean it's really
when you dig in to it, you're like, oh, this
is actually for real. It's hard to read about because
the architecture and design fields are possibly the two most
pretentious fields the Western world has ever come up with.
So reading writing about architecture and design is really kind

(46:16):
of laborious. But when you when you dig into it,
it is it is backed up and it does make
a lot of sense. I just hope it's not just
a passing trend. You know that it's here to stay. Yeah,
I think you know. We READID our House a couple
of years ago, and uh, one thing that we wanted
to make sure we allotted enough money for was windows, uh,

(46:37):
and lots of windows. And unfortunately, windows are one of
the more expensive things in a house. So my advice
to people if you are redoing your home or something
like that, are renovating, cotton balls and and try and
set aside dough and don't skimp on the windows if
you can, you know, even if it means maybe losing

(46:58):
something else, because that that that real light is huge.
Go from a one bathroom to a zero bathroom with
more windows. I don't know, drastic, but yeah, well, okay, Chuck,
good advice to end the episode on. You got any
other advice? Well, just one more little interesting thing. If
you hear a plant company talk about all these plants

(47:20):
will purify the air in your home. That's kind of
not true. That sounds familiarly. Yeah, I mean, plants are
always good for the air. But apparently the Atlantic issued
a report that said, if you really want to clean
the air in a tin by tin foot room, you
would need like a thousand house plants in there. Yeah,
I think to effectively clean, I saw that, but hey,

(47:42):
but it's still great. Get a thousand house plants in
your ten by ten room. Just learn to live among them.
It's just once they start talking to you, then it's
time to go outside. Right. Uh, you got anything else? Now?
Nothing else? I promise. Well, if you want to know
more about by a phili design, go online and start
looking at pictures and uh, maybe go to a local

(48:04):
Embassy suits because they've been doing it in their lobbies
for years and too good effect if you ask me.
And since I shouted out embassy suitets, that means it's
time for a listener mail. This is a literary correction
and I can't believe this snug past me and you
but from your mouth, guys. Want to preface by saying,

(48:26):
I'm very disappointed in myself for writing this email. I
feel bad that the first time I've written to you
is with a correction, but my inner English major can't resist.
On the episode on Dragons, Josh made a reference to
William Blake's epic poem Paradise Lost, But that was John Milton.
William Blake lived over a century later, but wrote a
lot of poetry on biblical themes as well. Confusingly, Blake

(48:46):
also wrote his own epic poem called Milton, which was
inspired by the story of Milton's writing Paradise Lost. It
is a little confusing, um and Jenna says, I'm sorry
to nitpick, but also had to mention the Fairy Queen
was written by Edmund Spencer rather than Spencer. Edmund, I said, Comma.
I think in between that, I think, I said Spencer,

(49:08):
Comma Edmund. Incidentally, I think Milton and Blake would both
make great topics. Milton was an incredibly prolific writer who
dealt with the onset of blindness as he wrote Paradise Lost,
and Blake was a true renaissance man who spearheaded the
Romantic movement. Spencer's life is maybe not quite so exciting,
but you twould find a way to make it interesting
as you do with everything. Thank you too and Jerry

(49:29):
for making such a great show just kept me company
over the past year, especially for handling both fun and
difficult topics in such a comprehensive and thoughtful way. Love Jenna.
That is a very lovely email. Yes, lovely is a
perfect word for that. Hopefully Jenna agree. She's the English major,
so she would know. If you want to get in
touch of this like Jenna did in a very nice way,

(49:51):
We love that. You can send us an email to
stuff podcast did iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more
podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

(50:12):
H