Ep. 156: Clever Extra - Creating Happier Places with Biophilic Design

On this Clever Extra, Amy Devers sits down with Kari Pei, Interface VP of Global Product Design; David Oakey, founder of David Oakey Designs; and Bill Browning, founding partner of Terrapin Bright Green and co-author of Nature Inside: A Biophilic Design Guide. Together, they unpack the science, practical applications, and ROI of creating happier places with biophilic design. They dive into how diversity can inspire fabric patterns, how “evidence-based design” can improve cardiac patients' health, and the ‘psychoacoustics’ of moving water. Kari, David, and Bill discuss their favorite patterns, the power of biophilic design to create a better world, and how design and technology can continue to draw from the world around us to create happier places. 

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Kari Pei: When we are trying to create spaces that bring out joy and make a person feel comfortable and secure, I think that we're making a better world. 

Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and this is Clever. Today, we’re talking all about biophilic design. Did you know that Adding biophilic elements to interiors can reduce stress, blood pressure and heart rates—all while increasing productivity, creativity and overall well-being? However, leveraging the health and wellness benefits of nature is more than just adding a few plants to a space. Features like natural light, vegetation, living walls, natural textures and materials, and nature views can significantly impact how we feel where we work, live, learn, and heal. So, to understand all the benefits and opportunities of biophilic design, I’m breaking it down with industry experts who have dedicated their lives to this subject… I’m joined by Kari Pei, Interface VP of Global Product Design; David Oakey, founder of David Oakey Designs; and Bill Browning, founding partner of Terrapin Bright Green and co-author of Nature Inside: A Biophilic Design Guide.  And We’re unpacking the science, practical applications, and ROI of creating happier places with biophilic design… here we go. 

Kari Pei: I'm Kari Pei and I work for Interface as Vice President of Global Design. I live between New York City and Serenbe, Georgia. I work primarily in LaGrange, Georgia. My title is Vice President of Global Design. I head up an internal team at Interface of product designers that are creating flooring systems that are both hard and soft for corporate, healthcare, some hospitality, and educational markets.

David Oakey: My name is David Oakey, I actually was born in England. I am a carpet designer. I came to the United States in 1973, and in 1994 I started working for Interface and Ray Anderson at that time challenged everyone to design sustainable products and that changed my life forever.

Bill Browning: Hi, I'm Bill Browning. I am a Partner in Terrapin Bright Green. We're a research and consulting firm doing work in the green building space. Home is Washington D.C., and we're really passionate about how buildings and products impact peoples' lives both psychologically and physiologically. 

Amy: Well, that's why we're here today. We want to get into how we can support through the built environment, physical wellness, psychological wellness. Biophilic design is the nature of this conversation, so why don't we start by wrapping our heads around just what we mean by biophilic design. 

Bill: Biophilia is a term that came from the social psychologist, Erich Fromm. The definition you most commonly see about an 'innate connection to nature' comes from Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson. In many ways it's what we've done intuitively in design for centuries, and that is thinking about how spaces connected just to nature and what makes us feel better and happier in spaces. 

They're all spaces that you can think of that you would go to. Sitting on the beach, or looking at a green wall, or sitting on the edge of a forest and looking out at the meadow can be really powerful experiences.

Amy: When we talk about biophilic design, we're talking about translating those powerful experiences into the built environment.

Bill: Correct. We do that sometimes directly and sometimes literally, and sometimes even by manipulating the shape of the space itself.

Amy: So, some of the literal examples are an atrium or bringing plants directly into the space. Other ideas might be cantilevering to allow for a different perspective of vantage point.

Bill: Right, I was thinking that a dramatic example of biophilic design would be Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water cantilevering out over that waterfall is pretty exhilarating. The house emerges out of the rocks that it was built from and those rocks occur inside the house as well, so you have that direct connection and you're surrounded by this amazing Pennsylvania forest, the wildlife and plants and that. The house's views and all out to that, connected into that. Then the sound of the water. When you're in the house, you hear the water lowing underneath you. It's pretty extraordinary.

Amy: We're talking about engaging all of the senses with those natural cues that can help to reinforce your biorhythms. Everything that humans respond to in nature, we can talk about those in terms of the built environment, in terms of interior design and product design. Kari, what are some of the specific impacts on well-being, physical, psychological well-being, but also motivation and creativity that we can hope to design for when we're looking at biophilic design?

Kari: In several studies it shows that references to nature can calm a person and help them to focus. If you use this kind of approach, especially if you're designing for, let's say an educational environment, you can have students that are more attentive, that are able to think through processes better, they're able to stay focused on a certain topic longer. At the same time it's reducing their anxiety, reduces their blood pressure. 

So, there are many different factors at play not only cognitively, but also physically through references of nature that can impact the performance of a student or the same thing can apply to the performance of a person in a work space. 

Amy: To me it seems obvious, but I think it's important that we talk about why does this feel so urgent right now?

Kari: It's as if it should have happened yesterday (laughter) for the longest time. It did start yesterday. To be quite honest, as Bill referenced at the very beginning, is that for a long time, over a century, we've been designing intuitively with nature in mind. To take the 14 patterns of biophilic design and apply them intentionally to our spaces that we're spending the majority of our days is necessary now because we have so much interruption and so much anxiety is developed by that interruption. 

Not only interruption from other noises or technology, but just interruption from surfaces reflecting too much sound, interruption from email that's constantly coming through. There are so many things that distract us from the work that we were supposed to be focused on, that these slight little elements that we can incorporate into the space is really helpful in making a person feel more rested by the end of the day instead of so completely burnt out.

Amy: I'm so glad you mentioned that because burnout is a very real thing and in light of the pandemic and other things that are going on in the world, we show up to everyday with a fair amount of anxiety around things that aren't necessarily even work related. To be able to do our best in the world and bring the best to our family and our community, we do need very much to be able to spend our time, our productive time and our downtime, in spaces that support us, support our well-being and help to reduce anxiety as opposed to amplify it. 

Of course we're having climate events that are causing some urgency. David, I wonder if you can talk to us about biophilic design and how it might relate to sustainability and connection to nature. 

David: I found biophilia after studying the work of Janine Benyus, Biomimicry. There's one chapter in Janine's book, How We Will Make Things. It just changed me completely. It was really how we're going to learn from nature and not use nature. There was some very simple, basic things as Janine talked about how we make things. In our factories we have waste that go on the factory floor. There's no word such as 'waste' in nature, it just doesn't exist. It's food for another species or the same species. 

You start to understand nature has a model that works and it's been here for millions of years. We kind of came in and started to take control. We actually started with a workship with Janine's assistant Dana Baumeister.and they said how would nature design a carpet tile. (Laughter)

But, first I have to give you that we were designing carpet tiles that are monolithic, uniform, every carpet tile came out to look exactly like the other one. We called it 'quality', and if it didn't, reject it and throw it away.

We started to understand just principles of design in nature and the diversity is one of the biggest design principles in nature. Every rock, every leaf is different in color and design. It's kind of organized chaos. There's no sameness. If nature was going to design a carpet tile, you would think every tile would come out slightly different in color and design.

We took that principle of trying to make that, it was very difficult back then. With the technology we have it's much easier to do today. But, we designed this product, we got it through manufacturing, opened the box. Each carpet tiles was different in color and design. We threw it on the floor, it was random. 

Then all the other positive things came with that of we didn't have to use different dye lots from our supplier. We could tell our customers they could actually replace one one, pop another one in, and they didn't have to see it. The waste reduction going through the plant and with our customers. With all those came positives. That connection of nature was really an important one, how we started. Even today we probably design products, at least 60% of our designs are in the same principles. 

We still have the customers who want monolithic, uniform plainness and we still have to design those, but nature will eventually win out. 

Amy: (Laughs) Nature always wins. This idea of biophilic design is not just a hypothesis, there's a fair amount of data to support that these impacts, these outcomes, these benefits, are real. Bill, can you talk about that a little bit? How evolved is the science and the study of biophilic design?

Bill: One of the first pieces of science that most people come across is the work of team, the Texas A&M University under Roger Ulrich who were looking at people recovering from one specific surgery. Those patients, some of them had a view to a brick wall, and the other patients had a view to some trees and shrubs. 

They discovered that the patients who had the view to trees and shrubs and they heard them all demographically and even matched the paint color in their room, all people going through the same surgery, they discovered these people who saw the trees and shrubs were getting out of the hospital almost one day sooner than the other patients. They were talking far less pain killers and had far less negative nursing calls.

Amy: That's incredible. 

Bill: Yeah, that's one of the first pieces of what's called 'evidence-based design' related to that. We see subsequent work with cardiac patients even just showing them a picture of nature before and after surgery and seeing lower blood pressure, lower heart rate, and better recovery times. 

Moving forward we see work using advanced neuroscience to actually watch what's happening in the brain as people are experiencing nature. We know that when you're out walking in nature you can get into those mode called 'soft fascination' where you prefrontal cortex quiets down and your brain is expending a lot less energy.

Then when you have to come back and focus you can be much more alert and on focused and much more productive. That experience of what's called 'attention restoration', the exposure time can be as little as 40 seconds. Longer is better, but the brain can shift that processing mode in just 40 seconds. 

So, we see work and looking at fractals which are self-repeating patterns that occur all over in nature. When we see those, it's easier for the brain to process that image. We see an almost immediate reduction in stress. Nature sounds also can have incredibly strong appeal. There's even now finally some measured evidence that certain smells impact the brain fairly dramatically.

There are all different ways of experiencing nature, but typically you can categorize the science or responses into three broad categories, improved physiological response, improved cognitive functioning, or related to emotions, mood, and preference. The science really falls into those three broad categories.

Amy: That's so helpful and fascinating. Now I want to dive into some of the ways that we can actually look at applying biophilic design to interior spaces, product design, the built world, commercial spaces, homes, anything where human intervention can actually think about and conceive of implementing biophilic design. 

In your 20+ years of studying you've extracted or identifies 15 patterns in nature that when translated into the built environment, can have significant benefits. You've kind of broken these out into three categories, nature in the space, natural analogues, and nature of the space. I'd like to start with nature in the space. What do you mean by that and what are some of the patterns in this category, Bill?

Bill: (Laughs) It's direct experiences of nature in the built environment, so seeing nature. Seeing it out the window, seeing plants, seeing animals, seeing fish in the fish tank.

Amy: That's the trees and shrubs and not the brick wall.

Bill: Yeah, that's the visual connection to nature. That is the most obvious and the first one. It's the green wall, it's the green roof, it's the terrarium. Non-visual connection to nature, as designers we tend to default to what does it look like and sometimes forget that there are lots of other different ways of experiencing nature. Haptic, what's the touch and the texture. The acoustics, what does it sound like. 

Amy: Is there a water feature.

Bill: If I can combine senses, if I can experience it in more than one sense simultaneously, the impact is much stronger. We also know that stimuli is best if it's not completely repeated in a repeating pattern or if it's non-rhythmic and it's stochastic, something that will get our attention. Unlike like a pendulum which is motion that will get our attention when we first put it in the house, after a day or so we completely ignore it. It's the same motion again and again.

Airflow, breezes, changes in temperature and how we perceive temperature is really important. Water is incredibly powerful. We respond to water in ways that override so many other things. In fact even the sound of water is by far the most effective masking sound you could ever use in a space. 

Not because of acoustics, but because of what's called 'psychoacoustics' which is the difference between all the sounds coming into your ear and which of those sounds the brain chooses to listen to. When you hear the sound of water, the brain will override most other sounds and just pay attention to that which makes sense from a survival standpoint.

Amy: It does. 

Bill: Our light, we want changes in color in light and shadow and patterns and the play of light and the changes of color of light because of the circadian impact of the course of the day. Then the last pattern in that group, which is the biggest of all the groups, is connection to natural systems. Seeing the changes over the course of the seasons, seeing things grow, seeing natural processes happen, and observing that and getting engaged with that can be incredibly powerful.

Amy: That's so fascinating. David, I'm kind of curious as a designer and as somebody who works in a biophilic environment, how do you see nature in the space implemented around you and how do you think about implementing it into products and interiors? Do you have some examples you can share?

David: The biggest example for us is our studio that we moved in in 1997. Actually 1997 was a big year for us in change. Designed by a good friend of mine, Elva Rubio and we have a little six acre lot on an industrial park. It's pretty much just pine trees. We commissioned Elva to design this studio back then. 

I think our first concept of the building were so different for me. She came from South Georgia and her story was when she was a young child she went out to play and there was this abandoned barn with these live oaks actually growing through the windows and that was one of the inspirations for our building. 

I didn't know what to do when I saw it, but I believed in her. The building did come out like kind of a southern barn with wood side, tin roof, and it sits in six acres of wooded lot. She really cried every time a tree was cut down, so we squeezed the building into nature. 

The connection with nature that we have every day here and the customers and people that come through over 25 years now, we have a beautiful place and it's a place that is hard to put the cost of designing sustainable building. One of the biggest things as far as cost of the building, are the people in it, not so much the upkeep of the building or even the cost of the building. It's the people.

If you can design a place that people want to come to work, and you can recruit and retain, those are all things that I think this building with the connection of nature, and we have so many animals and birds and deer and turkey. It's something that I never dreamt of first thinking about the building, but it's been just fantastic. I think it was in 2000 Business Week, voted it one of the best buildings to work in by bringing nature indoors.  

Amy: That does sound magical indeed. (Laughs) Kari, I would love to learn from you. When you're thinking about designing products and spaces, are you designing for these reported benefits, these outcomes? And if so, are you thinking about what types of interventions to bring nature in? What does that look like for you?

Kari: Yeah, absolutely. Some of the things that Bill was touching on in terms of having interrupted flow of sound or even visual refuge and also surprises that one would come upon as if they were walking in the woods, all of those elements of the 14 patterns of biophilic design. Those fit perfectly, or our modular system fits perfectly into creating spaces that can incorporate those elements into design.

We can use a bunch of different patterns from a variety of products and create spaces that are similar to a walk in the woods where you have a clearing of land and then you have some dense patch of trees. You're not literally making trees, but you're giving the impression of density and then openness and trying to incorporate abstractly, some of these 14 patterns of biophilic design into the floorscape.

Amy: It sounds like that particular example also incorporates the idea of soft fascination or attention restoration like he was talking about.

Kari: Yeah. One of the things that Bill was touching on, too, when he was talking about water. It reminded me very much of something that I had learned through a study that Mount Sinai was working on in epigenetic programming. Epigenetic programming suggests that from even before birth, when we're in in vitro which we're floating in a tank of water basically, we start connecting neurologically with different systems of sound or our sensitivity to light.

Even from the time of birth. There's some suggestions that it's before birth, but from the time of birth to throughout our lives, we're making these connections that we carry forward with us. A lot of those experiences that we have as children when we're playing outdoors most of the time, those neuroconnectivities are reconnected in spaces as an adult that can remind us of that joy that we experienced when we were a child. 

Amy: I can imagine that would be amazing for creativity.

Kari: Absolutely. I'm constantly thinking of the spaces that I loved as a child when we're designing collections and trying to capture some of that joy, some of that playfulness in whatever way that we can two dimensionally, somewhat three dimensionally. We can sculpt with pile, we have hard surfaces and soft surfaces that we can pair together intentionally. When we are trying to create spaces that bring out joy and make a person feel comfortable and secure, I think that we're making a better world. 

Amy: That's the underlying motivation, reason, purpose for all of this. If everyone feels better, then everything is better. (Laughter) Bill, The next category is natural analogues and these are things like biomorphic forms and patterns, actually using natural material, material connection to nature, and a really interesting one, complexity and order. Can you illustrate those for us?

Bill: So, the use of natural materials is the easy one in that one. (Laughs) There is a lot of work in what's called 'visual preferencing' that indicated that people really love natural materials or patterns that have references to those materials. 

Then the biomorphic forms, there are certain forms and shapes like the golden mean, the golden spiral, the Fibonacci sequence, that occur again and again in natural systems that when we see them in human designed objects it's easier for us to process. 

Then the complexity and order, is if it's simple and regular in the same thing again and again, we get bored very quickly. If it's too much chaos, then it can actually elicit a fear response, but in the sweet spot in that are the sorts of patterns that are types of fractals. 

Fractals are self-repeating patterns. They can be exact fractals, things like Mandelbrot set, or more commonly in nature what you see are called 'statistical' fractals. Great examples will be the dapple blade under trees or waves moving on the beach or flames dancing in a fireplace. Those are all great examples of statistical fractals.

Our brain is so predisposed to be able to process those that the neurosynapses doing that were called 'fractal fluency'. The brain is fluent with fractals and so when we see those sorts of patterns in human designed objects, you get a drop in stress almost immediately.

Amy: That's amazing. That makes me want to talk to you, Kari, about the Rising Science collection that Interface is (laughter) releasing. That has something to do with fractal geometries, yes?

Kari: Absolutely. The collection is two parts, one is angular and the other is abstract and organic. It's a story about how the staircase is a bridge to the garden or geometry can be a bridge to organic and abstract spaces. Then they can live together. 

But, there's fractals in both of these ideas. Many people think that nature has no right angles when in fact there are many examples of it in nature. The first one that always comes to mind is pyrite. The idea that you can take two completely different ideas of something that is really geometric and marry it with something that is very organic is something that people don't normally think work well together. It has to be either one or the other.

What we were trying to do in this collection is make it a playful collection where one abstracts into the other We find these examples in nature all the time, whereas you know you have the leaf which does seem very geometric at times, living with the bark which looks really quite beautiful together in the tree.

The Rising Science collection has, in the geometric products that are really strong angles, they are made up of little components, little elements that dither into nothingness. But, the nothingness where your eye can rest is actually quite complicated little landscape of various textures and pile heights. They're not perfectly flat. The irregularity of that surface which looks solid, is something that I think Bill kind of touched on a little bit when he was referring to interruptions. We feel more comfortable with things that have an irregularity to them. 

Then that angular product, abstracts through dithering as if it's sort of missed vapor, it vaporizes into the garden which is the more organic products that have an organization to them, but without looking gridded or too modular. It was really a fun collection to work on and it's all tied together through color and surprising little amounts of color. They're not big color fields, but the color just pops up here and there in surprising little ways.

Amy: It does sound like ways for your eyes to rest, but also wake up and find interest.

Kari: And playfulness, too. You're following the dots sometimes.

Amy: So, this would fall under the complexity and order category? Or biomorphic forms and patterns? Or material (laughter) connections in nature? Or all of it? (Laughs)

Kari: Yeah, it doesn't really have to fit into one category.

Bill: You'll see overlaps like that in the patterns, particularly when you get into this topic.

Amy: So, David, you've also designed a collection called Granite Mountain. Can you talk about your inspiration for that and where it overlaps land here.

David: Actually Granite Mountain came really from us not being able to go to trade shows around the world, to Milan and New York and London which we often go and see what's happening in furniture, architecture, other designs to get inspired. We were prevented by travelling.

We found a walk just 20 miles south of Atlanta which was an abandoned quarry. It was Arabia Mountain. It was a mountain of granite rock, it was very barren except for solution pits that formed in the mountain that had all this foliage and attracted all the different species and birds. The colors were just unbelievable in these little solution pits. It kind of reminded me of area rugs.

The interesting for me as a designer that I've struggled all my life designing carpet squares and rectangles to go into squares and rectangle offices, we always look at nature. Nature thrives on variety, randomness, flexible, curved, organic, diverse, which sometimes is very different from how man is designed. 

Again, we talk about uniformity, rigid, angular, geometric, monolithic, static. They're different things and I think we tried as much as we can to be inspired by nature with the organic diversity. Even if we're still making them in rectangle and squares, we want that movement and organic movement, diverse pattern and change to come into an interior. 

It was an abandoned granite quarry where they went in to take these slabs of granite and they were used in New York, in Washington. I think the granite was titled 'grey', a beautiful swirled, organic pattern, but nature has now taken back this land and we have nature interrupted with the squares and right angles and blocks. It's things that we fight against every day to try and get this movement and organic shape into our products.

We also watch now of the rise of more organic architecture all around the world and curves being brought inside, whether it's in furniture, whether it's in architectural details. We seem to be shifting towards that much softer biophilic feel.  It forced us in a new direction which I'm really pleased about. It was a fun collection.

Amy: They both sound like they've achieved that ability to soothe and connect that we're looking for with biophilic design. Bill, the third category is nature of the space and this is a really interesting category. It refers to how the space is arranged and the architectural elements and some other things like that. Can you describe what you are referring to with nature of the space examples?

Bill: Sure. We have a series of patterns in that. The first two are prospect and refuge. Prospect is an unimpeded view through space. It's really important for wayfinding, perceptions of safety. It's standing on the hill or standing on a granite mountain looking off to the distance. Prospect is being able to see through the space and figure out where you're going.

Amy: It's giving that lay of the land in a glance.

Bill: Exactly. Then refuge is where my back is protected and I have some canopy overhead. So, think the high-back booth in the restaurant. It's around the edge of the restaurant and up on a plinth. Now I have a view all up and down the rest of the restaurant so now I have prospect and refuge together. 

I love craftsman architecture and think about the classic craftsman bungalow with the big porch on the front, the overhanging roof, and you're up 18 inches. So, you're sitting on the porch and you can see all up and down the street, your back is protected. There is prospect and refuge together. Mystery is the next one. that's the curving path in the forest. You've just got to go see around the edge, or you're walking down the street and you smell those cookies from the bakery and you've just got to look in the window. You feel compelled to go explore. 

Maybe my favorite pattern is risk/peril. It's not one you want to use too much, but going back to a great Frank Lloyd Wright example, think about the Guggenheim Museum, a big spiral in the centre. You go up to the top and you look over that edge and it's pretty exhilarating. It's made even more exhilarating by the fact that Wright intentionally makes the railings just a little bit low so when you're looking over that edge it feels a little uncomfortable. You're not going to fall, but it's a lot more exhilarating than if it was this really high ledge up there.

Then finally what took us from 14 patterns to 15 patterns was a pattern we've recently added which is that of... Well, let me describe the experience. You walk up to the edge of the Grand Canyon, you stop, your eyes get wide, your mouth drops open. You want into a great cathedral and you see that same response. What's that pattern?

Amy: Awe. 

Bill: Yeah. (Laughs) Awe is a pattern that we've known for a while, but it wasn't really until the last two, two and a half years, there was enough science to actually finally define it and include it in our pattern set. That's why we now have moved from 14 patterns to 15 patterns. 

Kari: Oh my gosh. I want to read those studies. (Laughs)

Amy: Kari, how would you go about designing awe into a space. Let's say you don't have the 100 years and budget to build a cathedral (laughter) but you do want to incorporate awe into a built environment. What would you do?

Kari: First thing I would do is look to nature (laughs). Then also try to encapsulate some of the most essential elements of what was transferring that awe. Was it color, was it texture, was it light, was it shadow, was it glisten, was it matte and try to interpret whatever that recipe is into a system. That could be a combination of textures.

Bill: That's a great insight because people tend to think awe is only this grand spaces, but how you see awe experiences with pieces of art, you see it with music. They're even - Just who are helping people to go out and have a walk and experience awe just by what's around you.

Kari: David touched on a couple of things when he was talking about last year how we weren't able to travel. Travel is so essential to building that vocabulary of awe, but when you can't travel then you have to go to what you have available. In his finding Arabian Mountain, I'm sure he had that sense of awe not just to know that it was only 20 miles away, but that sense of awe when you get there and this spectacular view. 

Amy: David, I'm going to ask you next. I've got goosebumps as we're talking about this one. I think it's really interesting what you touched on because the mind does automatically think of grand spaces, but it doesn't have to happen in grand spaces. I'm thinking of cenotes, these underground cave pools of water to swim in, or even some of James Turrell's smaller occulus pieces where it's just the way that light is captured and manipulated that just really gets to that awe feeling. I can see where this would be so beneficial to design this into our spaces because I'm happy just talking about it. (Laughter)

David: The one thing, and Bill I think touched on this a little earlier, we look at the whole biophilic design process and change is one of the things that nature has on our interior space. That means color and design change from morning till night, day to day, season to season and we go through awe sometimes at Pond Studios and the next week that awe is gone. 

Change is a really important element for biophilic design. I saw a project in San Francisco where the window treatments were bringing in design patterns on the floor, just like Bill talked about a walk along maybe a wooded path where the canopy of leaves are putting a pattern on the floor. It comes and it goes.

Bringing elements of change into a space are things that I really start to think can create those moments. It's kind of like you're walking through the woods maybe on a warm day and suddenly a gust of wind hits you in the face and you say, “Well, that felt good.” (Laughter) Why can't we have those feelings as we walk through a space in our heating and cooling? Why do we have to have it on a certain temperature? Can it change? Can it move? 

This whole thing about change is something that I'd like to see in the future. Even if we have static products, technology can help with change and color and smell and it's effecting all the senses. Yes, we can have awe and it can come and it can go. 

Amy: (Laughs) That's a good point. Awe can happen, especially if it happens on a non-rhythmic schedule in the built environment. I want to talk quickly about what might be on some of our listeners' minds which is is biophilic design expensive? It doesn't necessarily have to be expensive. Bringing a plant in is pretty low cost, small choice you can make that leans towards biophilic design. But, if someone was going to invest in biophilic design, what would the return on the investment be? How would they measure that? Bill, this is something you've written about. Is this something you can speak to?

Bill: Well, we can measure it in lots of different ways. (Laughter) You've seen obviously improvements in healing and in hospitals. We see changes in the way that people perceive hotels and actually use the lobbies. They'll spend more time in the lobby and experience the lobby rather than just the biophilic lobby that just moves through it. We see grains in productivity. 

We did a yearlong study in a 6th Grade mathematics classroom where the only changes we made were Interface carpet tile with a pattern of waving grass, and window shades that had the tree branch shadows silk screened onto them, and some wallpaper, a frieze around the top of the classroom that was an abstraction of palm leaves.

What we saw was dramatically improved academic performance in the classroom, but we also did biometric tests really well. We saw that the students compared to the control classroom, their recovery characteristics improved over the 90 minutes they were in class. Whereas in the control classroom there was no change. We see increases in retail sales. All sorts of amazing shifts and things happening. There's ways that economic and social benefits from reduced crime and social housing. All lots and lots of different benefits.

Amy: That is amazing. I'm sold. (Laughter) I would love to hear from all three of you, if you wouldn't mind sharing a personal story of your connection to biophilic design. Kari, let's start with you. I know you live in a biophilic community. How would you say that's impacted your own life? 

Kari: I'm a New Yorker, I spent my whole career in New York, but I was raised in Nebraska. Lots of land, lots of brothers and sisters. My family is in floristry. So, I grew up outdoors all the time, always around flowers and plants and things. Then when I went to New York it was such a difference (laughter), it was a total concrete jungle.

What I found in Serenbe is a real combination between the two because what I love about New York so much is that people are constantly searching for what's next and what's better. They listen to these ideas and they do conduct these studies and they pay attention to them. They do invest in these ideas and companies that support these ideas. 

People are very progressive and they really do support the green movement in many, many ways with their money and with their intellect, but it's hard to slow down there. We lived blocks away from Central Park and raised our daughter with that as her backyard and even there in Central Park it's still hard to slow down. 

Come to Serenbe and you find these people that are very international, very invested in biophilic design, very invested in wellness and spending their lifes' careers supporting those ideas and those industries, but in a very calm and peaceful. They walk the talk here. 

Everything is pretty much farm to table. We have our plants delivered by our local farm which is in the centre of town. We have our neighborhoods that are intentionally designed so that any time you walk out the door your first vision is of nature. It's 30% residential, 70% nature, and designed intentionally like that. You have a wellness neighborhood, an agricultural neighborhood, and a cultural neighborhood.

You're connected to the arts as well which is almost a religious experience for me. Art being that's how I connect to nature and to my God. I live in Serenbe and work in Serenbe as much as I can, but it carries with me to the studio down in LaGrange and the team that I work with and how we respond to the ideas that we're putting forward in our collections that we're designing.

Amy: Do you find that you're actually enjoying some of these benefits like pro-social behavior and communal feelings and improved motivation and (laughter) cognitive restoration. (Laughs) I mean I want all of these things! (Laughter)

Kari: Yeah. Learning about all this stuff in the last six years that I've been with Interface, of course it was always really interesting when I was designing textiles up in New York and it was always part of the conversation. But, coming to Interface it's more than just conversation. It's a mission and it's something that you really need to understand and be able to speak about with knowledge otherwise you're not credible. That has really impacted the conversations that I have in New York actually on the weekends that I'm there. It's made whole life so much richer.

Amy: I love to hear that. David, you told us that wonderful story about Pond Studios where you work. What is your personal benefit?  It's definitely changed the course of your career, how has it changed you personally, physically, psychologically?

David: The whole concept as soon as we were challenged with sustainable, changed my life completely. I went through phases. I was born in England, seven miles from a town called Kidderminster which in the 60s was the carpet capital of the world. They really made Axminster and Wilton carpets woven with wool carpet. 

My first connection from my father who would go and get the waste wool from the manufacturers and bring it to his fields. He grew vegetables and he would spread the waste wool on the ground as fertilizer. Now, back then it was the 60s and the colors were kind of bright. (Laughter) It was the Austin Powers pink and purple and lime green. each fall as a young boy, I'd see my father do it. One year it stopped. I said to my father, “Why aren't we getting the waste wool?” He said, “The factories have started to add nylon to the product, now I can't use it as a fertilizer.” That story meant, as a young boy, just the disappointment of seeing these fields turn bright colors in the fall, 50 years later, understanding. First we have to understand of taking from nature. Lots of people think wool is the most sustainable. Yes, it's sustainable, but we all cannot have wool carpet. We would have too many sheep in the world. It's the carrying capacity. What I learned from Janine is we're not going to use nature, we have to learn from nature. 

Today we make carpet from waste, old carpet, fishing nets, and we recycle it again. We're not using natural materials; we're learning from nature and doing it. It's probably an exciting journey that I've been on and I'm glad I've been a part of it. 

Amy: I'm glad that you're a part of it, too. I can see that it's not just a journey, it's a mission. Bill, you've dedicated your life's work to studying biophilic design and helping the rest of us understand it. You've literally written the book on it. (Laughter) The more that you know about it, where do you feel the urgency is in terms of proselytizing?

Bill: I think the experience of the pandemic where those who were fortunate enough could work from home, others then had to work even more hours in jobs disconnected from nature. As a society we become much much more aware of connection to nature. If you look particularly as things have opened up, tourism to the national parks has just exploded in the United States. We get it, we know that nature is important. What has been intuitive has become much more openly obvious and discussed.

I'll admit that getting to biophilia was not a planned (laughs) route. We were doing work at Rocky Mountain Institute on documenting early green buildings. We were seeing surprising changes in worker productivity in these buildings and couldn't understand. We thought it's sunlight so I can see better, better color rendition and things like that.

We undertook an experiment funded by the US Department of Energy with one of the folks involved was an environmental psychologist, Judith Heerwagen from University of Washington. She introduced us to the concept of biophilia there and said this may be mechanism. 

What we realized, in many ways that the radical gains in productivity that we were seeing which had huge financial benefits, in many ways were just place holders for this really bigger issue of how do we design spaces and design products that support people's health and well-being. That's really the driver for biophilia.

Amy: And it's more relevant, important, and urgent than ever.

Amy: Well, this has been so informative and fascinating. I am so grateful. Thank you for sharing all of your wisdom with me today and with our listeners (laughs). This has been great.

Kari: Thank you, Amy. 

Bill: Thank you, Amy. It's been a great couple of hours reminiscing on a lot of design. It's got me excited again to start back into biophilia tomorrow. (Laughter)

David: I'd love any time I can spend with Kari and David. They're such inspirations for me. I just love seeing what they come up with next. It's always amazing. (Laughter) 

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Many thanks to this episode’s sponsors:

Interface, Inc. is a global flooring company specializing in carbon-neutral carpet tile and resilient flooring, including luxury vinyl tile (LVT), vinyl sheet, and nora® rubber flooring. Our products are designed with purpose, and we are committed to producing floors that inspire our customers to create spaces that enhance productivity, well-being, and the health of the planet. Through our mission, Climate Take Back™, we are working to reverse global warming and to encourage others to approach business in a way that is restorative for the planet and people. Learn more about Interface at interface.com.

Granite Mountain

Clockwise from top left: David Oakey, Kari Pei, Amy Devers, Bill Browning

Rising Signs, Proportional Phosphorus, Play The Angle, Cupric, Ashlar

Rising Signs, Proportional, Sulfur, NonDirectional

Granite Mountain

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Clever is produced by 2VDE Media. Thanks to Rich Stroffolino for editing this episode.
Production assistance from Ilana Nevins and music by El Ten Eleven—hear more on Bandcamp.
Shoutout to Jenny Rask for designing the Clever logo.

Clever is a proud member of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit airwavemedia.com to discover more great shows.

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