What Is Biophilia?
Biophilia often summarised as our innate love of nature and life, is a term coined by biologist E.O. Wilson to describe humans’ evolved connection to the natural world. It’s something intuitive: we notice when that connection is missing from the spaces we live and work in. It’s the idea the whole event was built around. Nature is the ultimate sensory-enriched environment, and the role of design is to create spaces in the built environment that emulate it, engaging all the senses for vitality, wellbeing and regeneration.
A Movement Bigger Than One Event
The event was timed to coincide with the New Zealand Green Building Council’s release of new Green Building Standards emphasising biophilic design, offering a chance to engage Green Star Accredited Professionals alongside a wider audience of architects, interior designers, builders and developers. Held at Europlan’s Parnell showroom in Auckland, it wove our own modular furniture into the spatial design, immersing attendees in installations built around elemental themes, local artistry and biophilic principles, alongside talks that pushed the dialogue on biophilic design in Aotearoa forward.
A Vision Built on Partnership
We were grateful to host this event in collaboration with Tricia Love Consultants, Miranda Brown and Green Air. Together we set out to grow interest and expertise in biophilic design within New Zealand’s built environment community, creating a space where people could see, sense and feel it in practice. Miranda Brown, as Creative Director, wove the interior together with a group of creatives and businesses, grounded in Steven Kellert’s Biophilic Framework, including its focus on evolved human responses to nature, like awe, curiosity, mystery, refuge and prospect.
The Voice of Nature
The pathway into Europlan was inspired by Te Ari Prendergast’s rug design, Te Nekeneke Tuna which is the story of the tuna’s journey to Moana and back. It honoured nature and all life through the design and build process, created with Heritage Carpets, Milliken Flooring, Arnya Karaitiana and Nauhria Guardians.
The Sacred Water Room
Each element and sense was engaged in the space. In the Water Room, a Rippledish water sculpture by Geoff McConnell sat alongside a water art projection by Brett Crockett and Puck Murphy.
Marama and Air
The Marama entrance featured Arnya Karaitiana’s Pā Harekeke rug, a Tāne curtain designed by Miranda Brown and printed by Materialised, and lighting by David Trubridge.
Creating Vitality
Green Air, led by Simon Chamberlain, filled the immersive interior with sculptural gardens and native and exotic planting, grounded in the earth and reaching for the sky.
Fire and Earth
Te Ra and The Phoenix Rising brought warmth through the Universal Connection Rug by Miranda Brown for Heritage Carpets, brass artwork by Daniel Blanshard, and Europlan’s Monsoon Sofa. Colour and pattern mattered too: fractal, repeat patterns relax the nervous system by up to 60%, a neuroaesthetics finding with economic, social and cultural benefit. This area featured furniture by Europlan, a rug by Heritage Carpets and a Plant Medicine wall covering by Miranda Brown.
Workpod and Wellness
A workpod designed by Miranda Brown and wrapped by Europlan showed biophilic principles at workplace scale. Tricia Love Consultants curated the speaker line-up; Wendy Douglas, Biophilic Wellness Curator, with Wilhemeena Monroe, led a Friday morning of movement, sound and tea ritual.
What Impact Does This Have on the Workplace?
The project set out to show how natural materials, planting, water, pattern and story build a genuinely biophilic workplace, and to educate our community on the real impact that has, for people and for business.
Global research backs this up. Interface’s Human Spaces study found that employees working in environments with natural elements of daylight, greenery and natural materials reported 15% higher wellbeing and 15% greater creativity, alongside a lift in productivity, compared with those in workspaces without them. Yet the same study found nearly half of office workers globally have no natural light at their desk, and more than half have no live plants nearby, which is exactly the gap that biophilic workplace design closes.
Thank you to Tricia Love Consultants, Miranda Brown, Green Air, Heritage Carpets, Te Ari Prendergast, Milliken Flooring, Arnya Karaitiana, Nauhria Guardians, Geoff McConnell, Brett Crockett, Puck Murphy, David Trubridge, Materialised, Daniel Blanshard, Wendy Douglas and Wilhemeena Monroe.
How do you feel in nature? That’s the question this all started with — and it’s one we keep asking on every workplace project since. If you’re ready to explore what that could look like for your space, talk to the Europlan team about biophilic workplace design.
Sources:
- https://mirandabrown.co.nz/
- Human Spaces: The Global Impact of Biophilic Design in the Workplace (Interface, PDF)
- Global Study Connects Levels of Employee Productivity and Well-Being to Office Design (PR Newswire)
