In many respects, textiles are the unsung champions of biophilic design. We often discuss the significance of natural light, living walls, and organic materials in the push toward designing our built environments to create more natural experiences. But what about the fabrics we touch, sit on, and surround ourselves with? Textile biophilia—that is, the idea that our homes and workplaces can be enhanced by the patterns, textures, and even the “natural healing” qualities of biophilic design—is, for my money, an underappreciated environmental force. Biophilic design is about creating a sense of place. Biophilic textiles, I’m convinced, can help achieve that.
Textiles offer a never-ending variety and are perfect for introducing biophilic design into a room. I can hardly imagine anything better for evoking a room’s biophilic design when seasonal moods call for it. They are not fixed. What could be more adaptable? They can be used almost anywhere and at any scale, from the large expanses of the walls to the intimate folds of a curtain. And I cannot think of a better way to say “I’m here with you, my friend,” when you wrap someone in a quilt.
I recall a specific project where I was responsible for the design of a boutique hotel within a dense urban context. While contemporary and streamlined, the hotel’s interiors were decidedly prosaic. Our client wanted us to infuse the space with certain design elements that would establish a dreamy, even tranquil, quality in the guest experience. After considering various options, the design team landed on the idea of using textiles to accomplish this goal.
The design of the hotel was not altered in any major way, nor did we add what could be considered “obvious” biophilic design elements, like a large indoor garden. The use of textiles—curtains, floor coverings, and throws—was the main component of the guestroom design. And honestly, it was a more modest and articulate way of establishing a sensory connection to nature that many people desire in their living spaces.
Biophilic textiles are built on an age-old and fundamental component of the human experience—natural fibers. Systems of living organisms, including humans, have coexisted with and depended on natural fibers for millennia. When our ancestors learned to cultivate and manipulate the fibers of plants and animals, they not only constructed the necessary outer shells to protect their bodies from the elements but also transformed their environments in ways that benefitted them and their progeny.
A fundamental tenet of biophilic textiles is the employment of natural fibers. Wow! You might think. Why don’t they live in the stone age if they are so into natural fibers? I mean, a wool textile or a silk textile is not a product of the stone age. You can argue that wool has been used since, what, 6,000 B.C.E? But still, an authentic wool textile is still so much better connected to nature and to biophilia than a synthetic textile (even if the synthetic textile has “state-of-the-art” imprinted on the surface).
Wool has always held a special place in my heart. My affinity goes beyond mere appreciation; it’s more like a love affair, really. Wool’s role in biophilic design, particularly in biophilic textiles, is something I hold dear. The warmth and texture of wool can only be described as grounding. I think of it as a hug for the senses, invoking memories of being swaddled in a skank, “like a good book or a blanket,” as Kate Dwyer puts it in her article about wool for the biannual magazine “All You Need” of the Urban Outfitters brand. Wool has played a large role in many of my interior design projects.
… It is part of the hardwired, biophilic universal design elements that I rely on.
Linen is another textile that I really love in biophilic design. It seems so simple and unassuming, yet so perfect for fulfilling biophilic design’s aim of bringing nature into our built environment. It has a certain elegance to it that makes it perfect for evoking the natural world. Because linen is a foundation textile in biophilic design, I wanted to share some linen-inspired vignettes and use them to illustrate the different ways one might think about incorporating linen into rooms while upholding both the spirit and the principles of biophilic design.
And because the principles of biophilic design can be applied to textiles and interiors in many different ways, I will also show you how a simple pair of linen curtains can be used to comply with biophilic design’s aim of creating the illusion of sunlight.
Botanical motifs and natural textures.
Biophilic textiles can also provide an affinity to nature through the makeup of their materials, though, and it is the materials that are my main interest as I begin this exploration of biophilic textiles and how they function. I’ve always had a penchant for botanical prints. In my mind, they aligned me and those who gazed upon them with the essence of nature, a connection that—at least in my case—was obviously more pronounced than the experience of seeing a lovely painting of a natural scene.
In one of my recent projects, I collaborated with a couple who wished to incorporate the beauty of their garden into their formal dining room. Rather than including live plants, we opted for a wallpaper in a botanical pattern. One accent wall, a pair of custom seat cushions, and my room gremlin never looked better. Indeed, on a recent visit, I was wowed by the whole space. In part, it had to do with the effortless way the siding duo of wallpaper and upholstery worked to create a seamless visual extension between the garden and the formal dining room.
But what I respect the most about the room’s quiet elegance is how it efficiently embodies the couple’s story.
Bringing nature to urban environments is a central tenet of the work we do at Studio Gear. One strong way to accomplish this is by creating vertical gardens, or green walls, in urban environments. These can blur the lines between where the city stops and nature starts, working well even on high-rise buildings. I’m particularly fond of projects that let native plant species take center stage, as these help support local wildlife and tend to require less in the way of water and maintenance (vertical gardens are sometimes unfairly rumored to be flora-producing waterworks). One such project featured a green wall on a residential building that—a year and a half after installation—now attracts a variety of local birds and insects.
Cities can choose to embrace biophilic urban planning for many different reasons, but the most important might be that doing so could help build climate resilience. As urban areas continue to experience the brunt of climate change—intensifying storms, soaring temperatures, and wild weather—nature-based solutions could prove vital for withstanding these impacts. Integrating green infrastructure—that is, trees, plants, and soil—into urban design makes the very notion of survival not just comfortable but also palatable. Parks, living roofs, and trees help take a beating out of the urban heat island effect. The presence of greenery in a sun-baked city can lower the temperature by several degrees.
When I was in an especially hot place working on putting together a community that would plant trees in a public square, I could sense the big difference in the intense heat a day before the installed trees were put in.
How biophilic urban planning contributes to stormwater management is another key part of the equation. With the continued addition of buildings and paved surfaces, downtown areas offer ever-diminishing opportunities for rainfall to soak into the ground. If left unchecked, this effect can be disastrous. Not only does stormwater runoff contribute to local flooding, but overflows also add a significant strain on municipal sewage treatment plants (see “A City and Its Rivers,” City Limits). By incorporating more natural elements—such as rain gardens, permeable surfaces, and green roofs—streets can be designed to minimize runoff. When paired with trees, the plantings in these depressions create a striking appearance even on the grayest of winter days.
Another vital element of biophilic urban planning is the urban forest. Although trees tend to be thought of as decoration or a way to adorn city streets, urban forests provide impressive benefits that far exceed their beauty. They capture and store carbon that would otherwise contribute to global warming. In the same way, they reduce other greenhouse gas emissions.
Indeed, they can and do help to make our cities cooler. So much urban space is given over to asphalt and concrete that immense heat sinks are created, and in many of our cities, it is already apparent that the forests help to counter this effect. The city might be an industrial center, yet it has so little green space that it might easily be described as a desert. Yet I knew of a tremendous opportunity to turn an abandoned lot right next to the river into a forest—a former brownfield on a lovely vacant site.
The presence of trees and greenery can reduce stress and improve residents’ mental health. In low-income neighborhoods, where residents often live under the cloud of poverty that presently seems all but inescapable, the transformative power of trees in nearly any urban setting is almost surreal. Installing trees in poor neighborhoods doesn’t just green things up a bit and make them prettier; it changes the very tenor of life that residents in those neighborhoods experience.
Integrating nature into urban spaces cannot only promote social interaction; it can also enhance the kind of social cohesion that makes people feel at home in their communities. In sprawling Texas, we suffer from a notable deficit of public parks and equivalent natural spaces. My friend Daniel and I worked to remedy that in downtown Denton, where our city plans suggest a proposed development shrouded in secrecy. Documents accompanying it assure the public that we remain well within the parameters of the City of Denton’s Downtown Development Plan and the Downtown Design Guidelines, both of which emphasize enhancing the pedestrian experience downtown and creating vibrant public spaces.
Our proposed community park achieves both aims. Our project proposes to create a much-needed social space in downtown Denton, a neighborhood that lacks significant green space.
A breathtaking illustration of the social power of biophilic design comes from an urban square we transformed from an ill-kept space into a lively public garden. The garden, positioned in the heart of the square, became a magnet for residents and visitors alike, offering them a chance to not just see the plants but also to interact with them. We knew that the simple act of people planting and pulling weeds would pull the community together, but the intensity with which the residents pursued the square-to-garden conversion was impressive. The space was almost entirely taken over by active public gardening.
So much of the community had a hand in it that I think everyone felt some public ownership of that personal garden.
One of the most persuasive reasons to include biophilic design in city planning is its powerful influence on human health. What we are beginning to understand better is that access to nature—whether in the form of parks, green roofs, or simply views of trees and plants—has a positive and, I would argue, a profound effect on mental health; not just for those with specific mental health issues but for everyone.
My first opportunity to experience the health benefits of biophilic urbanism came in my hometown of San Francisco, where I worked on a groundbreaking project to integrate nature into the city. Our primary focus was on creating small, “pocket parks” in some of the most densely built parts of the city. But what really captivated me was the design of each park. I had a hand in the design of two of these parks, and even though I lack the artistic talent to draw or paint, I’m going to share with you some images that were part of the design process for these two parks.
Numerous people commented on how their mental well-being had improved since the recent installation of these small patches of nature and how they now had an essential escape from the stresses of urban life. There is something incredibly powerful about the way nature influences our state of mind, and research has shown that just being in the presence of plants can cause a significant uptick in our serotonin levels, making us feel happier and more at ease. This is why many hospitals across the country have started to incorporate gardens into their outdoor spaces for patients, staff, and visitors to enjoy.
On a recent project, I worked with an architecture team to help design a series of biophilic healing gardens for a hospital in our local area.
For many patients, the garden offered a critical part of their healing. It was a place to relax and be more connected to the natural world, and for many people, it might as well have been a hospital in itself. That’s how important it was. … I did this garden at the top of an apartment building. The rooftop was probably more urban than you could imagine. I was looking at about five feet of headspace to work with. The way I got around that was to make the plants themselves the feature and to plant them all in native soils.
Probably the most unusual thing about the space was that some of the patients were in rooms across from the skyway in the upper left corner of the hospital. So they got to see the greenery inside the garden (above the top of the apartment building) while they were lying in bed.
These seemingly straightforward initiatives can profoundly influence how well urban residents flourish. Biophilic urbanism, which can be described as nature-infused city design, builds upon the age-old idea of salutogenic environments: spaces that foster health and well-being. Salutogenic design intuitively understands that environments have a powerful (and often underestimated) effect on people. A friend of mine who teaches at the University of North Carolina used this phrase in a conversation the other day: “The environment is the medium through which the people in it relate to one another and to the space they share.”
The immediate effect was increased foot traffic, the resurgence of local businesses, and the area’s emergence as one of the top desirable places to live and work in the city. People love to walk to work and school in the cool green shade of tree-lined streets. More than ever, this biophilic corridor is a reality. The physical health benefits of walking, of course, are well-documented. Even small biophilic interventions can have a big impact on our collective physical health. I once worked on a project where we installed outdoor exercise stations along a green corridor in a residential neighborhood.
These simple stations—pull-up bars, stretching posts, and the like—nudged people to use the green space not just for walking but for more vigorous exercising, too.
The corridor has turned into a well-traveled path for joggers, runners, and cyclists, as well as for many families who enjoy the path’s outdoor spaces. They have, in effect, created a rebirth of the path as a solid community space, an “active living” corridor, where members of the community can enjoy the simple pleasures of the path while also getting healthy. If we expand the vision and the reach of the communities in and around the corridor, we might think in terms of biophilic planning, which for some folks just means more trees, more plants, and a whole lot of nature.
The incorporation of green roofs, permeable pavements, and urban forests into our coastal city project makes it more resilient to extreme weather events, such as heat waves and flooding. The city itself is being transformed into a beautiful, biodiverse space where residents can enjoy nature—one that also provides vital protection against storm surges and flooding. The project demonstrated how biophilic urban planning can enhance ecological resilience and well-being.
As we cast our gaze forward, it seems clear to me that biophilic design will be a pivotal player in crafting the next iteration of cities. The trio of urban planners, architects, and communities will need to come together to fashion environments that put nature—and along with it, health and sustainability—front and center. Large-scale initiatives like green corridors and urban forests will carry a big part of the load, but biophilic design calls for many small moves, too, like rooftop gardens and rainwater harvesting, that reimagine urban space and make it work much better for people and for nature.
Going Forward: Urban Naturalism Is the Key to a Sustainable Future
The future of urban living is closely intertwined with the richness of nature. Ecological structures—especially natural ones—are seeing the favorable impacts of climate change and human population growth; they are faster, denser, and wilder. These changes promise beneficial effects for the millions of people who live in an increasingly urbanized world.
Reimagining biophilia—that is, the love of life and living systems—takes a unique creative vision when applied to urban planning. And that’s because our cities are hardly “living.” They are, by and large, concrete elysiums devoid of natural elements that are essential for both humans and nonhumans to thrive. “Our traditional cities are poisonous,” writes sustainability scholar Jason McLennan in his book “The Philosophy of Sustainable Design.” “They are toxic to our bodies, scholars, and natural systems—all of which contribute to the ecosystem services that allow us to survive.”
My ongoing urban-nature projects keep the biophilic ideal close to home: quiet parks in bustling cities; rooftop gardens in high-rises; tree-lined streets—each designed to invite the kind of public courting that makes these spaces feel alive. I never really signed on for the “designing for the environment” mantle, but it’s a handy way to sum up biophilic benefits, which make a good case to any skeptical clients who might ask why they should care about such details as building shape, contour, and material.
Urban living isn’t about selecting either nature or the city; it’s about melding the two into a combination that benefits both humans and the natural world. The project strips away the notion that urban living inherently requires compromising one’s relationship with nature. Instead, it demonstrates that the natural and urban can coexist. This is huge, in part because over 50 percent of the global population lives in cities, but also because urban populations are projected to grow even faster.
