Category Archives: Biophilia

London: Buzzy and Bright

June 9, 2012

We can barely touch the surface of the science of Biophilia and the disciplines it encompasses, but to give you a glimpse, we present the last of four examples of how different peoples and countries are putting their biofeelings to work around the world. Each of these initiatives represents a way to reach thousands of other people with the message that biophilic elements have real value in the built environment. The more we each understand this, the more likely we are to protect the natural spaces we have left.

All over the world, beekeeping has become increasingly popular as a way for urban dwellers to reconnect with nature. The people of London have embraced it for a whole host of reasons: the honey, the stress relief, and the connection with nature. After all, beekeeping is ideal in a city of parks and gardens. London’s remarkable 25% green space is provided by private gardens of all sizes and types. Elegant garden squares, open public spaces, and the famous Royal Parks, such as Hyde Park, Kensington gardens and St. James’s Park. Together, these are home to a huge diversity of plant life.

THE TASTE OF HONEY

The rich variety of forage available here results in an amazingly complex tasting, and plentiful, supply of honey. It’s not just urban farmers and community gardeners who are getting involved, but people from all walks of life. They do it to help the environment and — perhaps most importantly — to escape the stresses of modern life. In short, they do it to put a little natural warmth back into their cool city lives.

WHERE DO THE BEES LIVE?

From back yards to Buckingham Palace, beehives are almost anywhere in London. More surprisingly, you can now find beehives on many of London’s rooftops — where bees need particularly careful handling. St Paul’s Cathedral and Tate Modern have them on their roofs, looked after by expert beekeepers. Historic department store Fortnum & Mason has had particular success with its sixth-floor hives, producing its exclusive Fortnum’s Bees Honey.

2500 Hives registered in London / 50,000 Bees in each hive / 70 lbs. of Honey from each hive in every season

NO BEES. NO PLANTS. NO PEOPLE.

In A World Without Bees, urban beekeeping experts Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum discuss how, if all the world’s bees disappeared, mankind would have only four years left to live. Without bees, there’s no pollination, and without pollination, there are no plants — and soon no animals, and then no humans. It’s a sobering thought that the western honeybee pollinates 70% of the food we eat. And it’s an extremely sound reason to become a beekeeper.

THE BEEKEEPER’S FRIEND

But if the ultimate aim is to save bees (and therefore ourselves), it’s important to do it properly. Keeping thousands of bees happy, healthy and productive is a complex craft. Anyone who looks into a beehive is enthralled by this mesmerizing miracle of organization. And there’s plenty of help for those who want to learn. For example, The London Beekeepers Association (LBKA) offers in-depth training and a mentoring program, which supports novice beekeepers, passing on a wealth of experience.

BEE FRIENDLY GARDENS

City dwellers that don’t practice beekeeping can still help protect our ecology and our food chain. “You don’t have to keep bees to save them,” says the LBKA, “There are many other useful things we can all do. We can plant ‘pollinator-friendly’ flowers, trees and plants. We can also stop using pesticides in our gardens. And we can support our local beekeepers by buying their honey.”

Inspired to Act Natural? Learn more about biophilia and how it influences our design, and enter our Act Natural Sweepstakes for a chance to win a trip for two to Greenbuild 2012.

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Singapore: The Lion City Roars

June 8, 2012

We can barely touch the surface of the science of Biophilia and the disciplines it encompasses, but to give you a glimpse, we present the third of four examples of how different peoples and countries are putting their biofeelings to work around the world. Each of these initiatives represents a way to reach thousands of other people with the message that biophilic elements have real value in the built environment. The more we each understand this, the more likely we are to protect the natural spaces we have left.

Singapore is a small tropical island country with a big reputation. It is well known as the premier financial hub in Asia and one of the world’s leading financial centers. It is called The Lion City (from its Malayan name) but also sometimes called The Garden City (for its 358 parks and 4 nature reserves). But just for the record, lions never lived here.

Singapore is a highly urbanized nation with a population of close to five million in about 272 square miles (704km). This land has been hard earned through on-going land-reclamation projects. Specifically because land comes at such a premium, most people live and work in high-rise structures. Since the city is so appealing financially, it attracts some of the world’s renowned architects—especially those with an ecological approach to building design.

The Solaris project is a prime example. Conceived and designed by architect Dr. Ken Yeang (whose firm is one of Fast Company’s 2011 Top 8 Most Innovative in the World), Solaris is a marvel of comprehensive ecothought.

Vertical green urbanism is the hallmark of Ken Yeang’s work. Dr. Yeang, who holds a PhD in ecological design and planning from the University of Cambridge, is the author of the 1997 book, The Skyscraper, Bioclimatically Considered.

A LIVING BUILDING

Even the shape of the Solaris building evokes a sense of life. From the exterior, one sees cascading landscaped terraces that bring nature to the doorstep of each office. Inside, two tower blocks are separated by a grand, naturally ventilated central atrium.

Roof gardens and corner sky terraces aren’t just cosmetic or recreational, important as those things may be. They act as thermal buffers. The building’s extensive eco-infrastructure is irrigated by rainwater that is harvested, stored, and then recycled throughout the building.

THAT TRULY FEELS ALIVE

Ms. Siyao He, Sustainable Solutions Manager for Interface, Asia, visited Solaris to give us a firsthand review of the project. She says. “Even though I’m in a building, I feel like I am in an open “breathable space” because of the glass façade that allows an expansive amount of natural light in and the greenery inside.” Ms. Siyao described the eco-infrastructure as a very important part of the building’s aesthetic, saying that the greenery “is designed in a spiral to provide a seemingly continuous flow of greenery throughout the building.” What a lovely thought: the pale white base color of the building blending with all the tones of green inside, gentled by the natural light of the glass atrium and still, the outside visible.

Inspired to Act Natural? Learn more about biophilia and how it influences our design, and enter our Act Natural Sweepstakes for a chance to win a trip for two to Greenbuild 2012.

 

 

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Sydney: Wooly Bully

June 7, 2012

We can barely touch the surface of the science of Biophilia and the disciplines it encompasses, but to give you a glimpse, we present the second of four examples of how different peoples and countries are putting their biofeelings to work around the world. Each of these initiatives represents a way to reach thousands of other people with the message that biophilic elements have real value in the built environment. The more we each understand this, the more likely we are to protect the natural spaces we have left.

Sydney, Australia is city of stunning architectural contrasts. It is well known for the Sydney Opera House, perhaps the most recognizable building of the 20th century. But eight kilometers north there is Castlecrag, a suburb with an Arts and Crafts feel to it. More to our point, it has a distinct Biophilia point of view. Castlecrag was designed in 1925 by Chicago Architect Walter Burley Griffin.

Burley Griffin, who had worked with Frank Lloyd Wright and created most of Frank’s early landscapes, designed Castlecrag specifically to celebrate the native bushland plants and natural stone of Australia. Many of the homes were built of the stone from the nearby cliffs so they could blend into the natural environment. Many also featured interior courtyards in the style of Roman villas. All this was decades before a national environmental organization formed to protect Australia’s native vegetation. Greening Australia, the 1982 collaboration between the United Nations Association of Australia and the Nursery Industry Association of Australia, began by focusing on declining tree cover. As needs changed, the group responded accordingly.

Which brings us, in a way, to the subject of green roofs. The idea of a ‘green roof’ is thousands of years old. The Vikings, the earliest Europeans and Native Americans, and the first American western settlers all had grass and sod roofs in common. It is a brilliant architectural solution: A natural heating and cooling system that’s easy to repair and (bonus) feeds livestock.

M Central Residential - Dale Jones-Evans Pty Ltd Architecture

Modern green roofs offer these benefits and more. Green roofs are marvels of biodiversity-enhancing, heat-alleviating, sound-insulating, stormwater-reducing beauties in urban eco-systems.

Since 2002, the country has embraced green roofs in every sector. Melbourne’s City Council House 2 Building set the benchmark for the rest of the country with its six-star Green Star Design certification from the Green Building Council.

In Sydney, two centrally located late-1800s ‘Wool Stores’ were restored into a loft metropolis with an amazing 2600m2 garden up on the roof.

M Central Residential is a massive but meticulously re-imagined heritage commercial warehouse site that began life during the heyday of Sydney’s wool trade. Built near the docks for ready access to clipper ships (such as the Cutty Sark), the buildings were made for storage; brick on the outside and good timber on the inside.

Architect Dale Jones-Evans retained as much of the original brick and timber as possible when converting the building into apartments and sky homes grounded by six retail spaces. He conceived the roof as an ‘elevated Australian parkland’ of savanna grasses, succulents, and timber boardwalks.

All of this, of course, is far above the streets of Sydney just a stone’s throw from Darling Harbour where the clipper ships (and later, the steamers) once came and left with the wool that was the country’s economic lifeline in the 1800s.

Any green roof, no matter how primitive, is a living, breathing thermal dynamics department. To find one that is beautiful, authentic, and anchored in a country’s national history like the one at M Central, is another thing entirely.

Learn more about the rooftop garden at mcentral.com.au and see more great projects at dje.com.au.

Inspired to Act Natural? Learn more about biophilia and how it influences our design, and enter our Act Natural Sweepstakes for a chance to win a trip for two to Greenbuild 2012.

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Washington and New York: The Mentalists

June 6, 2012

We can barely touch the surface of the science of Biophilia and the disciplines it encompasses, but to give you a glimpse, we present the first of four examples of how different peoples and countries are putting their biofeelings to work around the world. Each of these initiatives represents a way to reach thousands of other people with the message that biophilic elements have real value in the built environment. The more we each understand this, the more likely we are to protect the natural spaces we have left.

Terrapin Bright Green is an environmental consultancy with offices in New York and Washington, D.C. They are an extreme environmental consultancy, you might say. Its founders and partners are intellectual heavyweights who are leaders in the green building and real estate movement, award-winning architects, biomimicry and sustainable design advocates, and forensic historic preservationists.

More than anything else, however, Terrapin Bright Green are thinker-strategists; a brave new breed of eco-infrastructure experts with scientists and policy makers on speed dial. This company has set new precedents for ‘think-do’ tanks for projects of global scale and strategic impact. Members have advised, among other entities, the White House; the new World Trade Center; Grand Canyon National Park; Algae Biofuels; Xihu Tiandi (Shangahi); Caicique (Costa Rica); and the Serengeti National Park (Africa).

Bill Browning, the founder of Terrapin Bright Green, cut his teeth on out of the green box thinking. Early in his career he helped build Buckminster Fuller’s last experimental structure. Browning is also a member (along with Biomimicry 3.8’s Janine Benyus) of the original Interface eco Dream Team.

“We are a small consulting firm pretty heavily involved in both Biophilia and Biomimicry,” says Browning. “These are two pieces that filter our world view in a really intriguing way. Both are core to our work as a practice.”

One of the projects Terrapin Bright Green is undertaking has the group collaborating with Janine Benyus and The Biomimicry Guild to provide technical assistance to the businesses in New York. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority will fund workshops open to any business wishing to consider possible biomimetic solutions to their challenges.

“The idea of Biophilia has come into the mainstream population only fairly recently,” says Browning. “Although intuitively, people have been doing it forever.”

To put that in simple terms, we pay more for apartments in park like settings. We buy more (and pay more) in retail environments with plants, trees, and skylights.

Terrapin Bright Green has just published a comprehensive white paper on the subject titled, The Economics of Biophilia: Why Designing with Nature Makes Good Financial Sense. One morsel: The healthcare industry could save $93 million dollars each year if patients had views to nature.

The study examines the positive business impact—usually financial—of making room for nature in sectors from the workplace to the classroom to the courtroom. Scientific calculations and thorough references are included for those not easily convinced that the Japanese practice of Shinrin-yoku might lower blood glucose levels.

Browning says one issue that concerns him now is America’s election year politicizing of the environment. “The whole green issue is being defined as a republican/democrat issue. You don’t see that so much in other countries.”

It has been impossible not to speak to Interface Dream Team members about the legacy of Ray Anderson. Bill Browning put it thusly: “Now, there can and will be other Ray Andersons. But he was the first one. You know, it was fitting that the first major industrial company to step up to the plate was a carpet company. Because the first major industrial revolution started with fabric as well.”

Inspired to Act Natural? Learn more about biophilia and how it influences our design, and enter our Act Natural Sweepstakes for a chance to win a trip for two to Greenbuild 2012.

 

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