The notion of incorporating nature into our built environments strikes a personal chord with me, particularly in its application to the spaces where we congregate to do our business—like meeting rooms. In expedient, omnipresent American society, people are stuck in enclosed, lifeless rooms. Is it any wonder that we sometimes feel like zombies, maneuvering toward business goals for the sake of a paycheck? These are not necromancy rooms; they are bad for business. So, when it comes to meeting rooms, the chance to do something different—something biophilic—isn’t just a good idea; it’s a necessity.
A biophilic meeting room can be established without drastic changes or renovations. Biophilia is the love of life, and biophilic design incorporates natural elements into a space to enhance the aesthetic and improve functionality. I’ve experienced how adding certain natural elements to a space can strongly influence the clarity of just what the mind can conceive during a meeting. Biophilic design in a meeting space can be as simple as adding a living wall, optimizing natural light, or using materials that mimic natural textures. And what I love about it is how even subtle tweaks can transform a meeting room into a space that truly feels alive.
Part 1: Allow Nature to Illuminate Your Path
Biophilic design can work wonders for meeting spaces, especially regarding lighting. Meeting rooms typically set up lighting as an afterthought, with unflattering results. Everyone in a poorly lit space appears to be operating at half steam. A few years ago, I stepped into a poorly lit meeting room with yellowish light. Not only did it make the space feel more claustrophobic, but it also made everyone in the room look and act lethargic. My lighting advocacy is really a natural light advocacy. Natural light should be the starting point for any good biophilic design space.
The problem, of course, is that many conference rooms are internal spaces with no windows. However, this doesn’t preclude the use of biophilic design. For windowless rooms, I often recommend light fixtures that mimic the quantity and quality of natural light. I’ve seen some really creative designs for “circadian” lighting, which changes throughout the day to maintain some semblance of our body’s natural rhythm. One somewhat unforgettable project had a lighting designer simulate a skylight. The installation used quite a few LEDs, which have less of a “hard” quality than incandescent or fluorescent bulbs, but also employed a series of very clever tricks.
The upshot is that the room no longer feels like a conference room; instead, it feels like a lovely, sunlit space.
In spaces with windows, making the most of natural light is essential. I’ve found that just pulling back a heavy curtain or moving a table closer to a window can result in an immediate boost to the light levels in a room. The view outside doesn’t have to be anything special; even a modest amount of greenery—be it a small tree, a tiny courtyard, or a window well—can work wonders for lifting the drab, indoor quality of a meeting space. When I’ve been given the chance to condition a room, I typically favor sheer curtains that filter sunlight into the kind of evenly diffused yet lively beam that gives a room both a cozy and an energizing quality.
Section 2: Integrating Plants into Your Office: Living Walls and Other Vertical Planting Options
Bringing the biophilic effect to a meeting room is easy. All it takes is a simple introduction of greenery. Yet I’ve experienced too many conference spaces that feature the “greenery” of, say, a solitary, barely alive potted plant. I remember feeling for this poor excuse for a green touch in a conference room I occupied for an hour. If anything, the weakly photosynthesizing plant was a bit of an affront to nature. The plant in this particular meeting space gave off no light, no life, no energy, and no ambiance.
In contrast, the most thoughtfully conceived biophilic meeting spaces do more than just include greenery—they make it a central design element. A living wall can serve as an eye-catching centerpiece, which is one of my favorite types of biophilic design touches to add to a meeting room. There’s something undeniably arresting about a vertical garden; it seems to beg the spatial, visual, and tactile attention of all who pass it. I once saw a project through to completion that included a living wall in the meeting space. I selected for the wall a range of ferns and ivies.
These plants not only thrive in low light and have a minimal maintenance requirement, but they also render the air around them fresher—something both the Florida Institute of Technology and NASA have quantified.
Undoubtedly, not every meeting room has the budget or space for a large living wall. Fortunately, that doesn’t mean we can’t reap the benefits of plants in a meeting room. Smaller plants can create a powerful effect. When I think about how to introduce plants into a meeting room, I can hardly contain my excitement at the possibilities. For me, meeting room décor practically demands the use of plants, and not just for their wow factor. I see the use of plants in a meeting room as an opportunity to dial up the biophilia. To that end, I suggest really thinking about plant placement, using height variations (and even some unforeseen ceiling space) to create a connected-to-nature moment.
A colleague once told me about her experience entering a meeting room filled with plants of different sizes. She described it as entering a jungle—this was clearly the best possible way for her to describe her feelings about the space. She loved that there was a lot of greenery, and she thought it was a good thing that the plants obscured the ceiling. I have to admit that the feeling of being in a wild plant scenario or even a domesticated plant scenario isn’t appealing to me. I feel like the plants would distract me from the main point of the meeting.
I might also be a bit too claustrophobic to feel comfortable in a warm, green hug. Nonetheless, several plants in a well-lit meeting room isn’t a meeting space bad idea, as far as I can tell.
What I really like is the design element of using natural materials. I visited a meeting space that primarily featured reclaimed wood, and that tabletop was magnificent! Embedded in the wood was living plant material—like a plant in a terrarium. Its presence on the table, along with the use of reclaimed wood, nearly made me forget I was in a meeting space and not outside having a conversation in nature. Why does that matter? Because the textures and materials of the natural world can be used to create modern design; that’s why.
The sensory experience of sound, scent, and texture.
Biophilic meeting rooms aren’t only about the visuals; they engage us on all sensory levels. I wouldn’t necessarily say that when I walk into a biophilic room, the visuals blow me away compared to what else I might behold in an office. It’s more that the experience feels complete, and I know it was designed with intention for all of my senses. I mean, have you ever been in a meeting and just wanted to press your palm into the surface of the table? That longing may say something deeper about the kind of human-animal bond we have with lush textures in our environments.
Let’s consider sound for a moment. Meeting rooms ought to be spaces where people can concentrate and communicate, yet they are often infiltrated by background noise or an unnatural silence that feels oppressive. I once went into a meeting room that used a smart soundscaping technique. Instead of dead silence, which can make people feel nervous, the room played soft nature sounds—distant bird calls and other indistinct noises that suggested the presence of nearby animals. The sounds weren’t overbearing or even very noticeable. In my mind, they were put in practically the same way as a perfume, which shouldn’t be so strong that it’s the first thing people notice upon entering a room, but should be present enough that it contributes to the overall effect of the environment when people are inhabiting it.
Another element often neglected in conference room design is scent. For a long time, I’ve thought that using scents was an excellent way to set the mood for a conference room. Scent has an underrated effect on atmosphere, and natural aromas can be a great way to make a “space place.” I designed a meeting room that incorporated an essential oil diffuser, with different blends for morning, midday, and afternoon meetings. Citrus for the morning, with a blend of lemon and lime that was energizing, fresh, and not too heavy. For the middle of the day, with a conference that might have a “Calm Your Wild Ideas” theme, the scent would be sort of mood-setting sandalwood — light and airy, not oppressive but definitely with some sort of presence.
The final consideration is texture. For me, a biophilic meeting room shouldn’t just be visually appealing—although visual appeal certainly can help with the biophilic aspect of an enclosed interior, the way a space looks should be secondary to how it feels to be inside of it. Natural materials like wood, stone, and wool can introduce a sense of grounding and warmth that makes a meeting room feel convivial instead of, as one might expect from a corporate meeting space, merely formal. I was once in a space with bamboo accents, and the upholstery on the meeting chairs was a wool blend.
That room was strange in its warmth and the slippery way it straddled being both formal and informal. I enjoyed the tactile experience of being in that meeting room. I trust that the panel of bamboo doesn’t feel much different from the paneling of my wood and stone fireplace back home. That meeting room was warm, and I’ve long believed that warmth is a biophilic essential.
At its essence, biophilic design fosters human well-being. It’s about bringing in the natural elements that make spaces feel connected, comfortable, and even invigorating. The meeting room has the potential to be all these things. Why not let it? Naturally inspired and lit, with plants in the corners and the sounds of a nearby waterfall—nature may be saying, this way, go. And with six textures to touch, perhaps nature is also reminding us to pay attention in a way that makes us more human and, presumably, better at what happens next (or better at what just happened).
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Part 4: Harmonizing Appearance and Utility
Biophilic design has many fundamental tenets, but one of its most essential principles is to maintain a delicate balance between aesthetics and function. Easy as it may be to fall under the spell of nature’s visual allure—plants, textures of wood, forms of nature—designing a conference room also centers on the need for strong, clear, and effective collaboration and communication to happen within its walls. The beauty of biophilic design is that it requests, invites, facilite, and coaxes all of these necessary happenings to happen in a visually stunning environment.
I remember a project that involved designing a tech company’s meeting room. The company was very progressive and appreciated the aesthetics of biophilic design, but they were also intensely concerned with function. Here was a space that needed to look and feel good for the kind of fast, loose teamwork they also needed to facilitate. One of the design team’s solutions was a large table made of reclaimed wood. How well did that surface hold up to the ersatz biology of a friendly drawing made with a dry-erase marker? Surrounding that table were chairs made primarily of natural materials, very comfortably molded to the kinds of curves controlled drumming on one’s knees and soft punches to the air naturally follow.
This project most fascinated me for how we brought technology into the biophilic design. For instance, instead of regular glass, we used smart glass, that could be adjusted throughout the day to let in either a flood of natural light or just a gentle touch, depending on the time of day or the needs of the meeting. The smart glass had an embedded layer that could go from very safe transparent to “Oops, we forgot to water the plants” opaque with the flick of a switch. Once I figured out the Biophilia 101 principles, it was clear that this installation truly embodied the cutting-edge, techy aspects of biophillic design.
We paid another close attention to acoustic design. Meeting rooms frequently face challenges with sound. They tend to be either too loud with echoes bouncing off hard surfaces or too quiet, which can be just as uncomfortable. In this space, we used natural materials such as cork that dampen sound and felt panels that do the same—something we learned from our time designing confined spaces for acoustic guitar makers. These materials added another subtlety to the design because, while they do affect the sound quality in the room, they also contribute to the texture of the meeting space.
Soft surfaces in rooms make them feel more intimate and cozy, which is important as you can imagine for a space you’d like to occupy for a long period of time with a large group of people (though if the meeting goes long, I’m betting you’d benefit just as much from the interior design as you would from the conference agenda).
Part 5: Improving Well-Being With Biophilic Design
The design that incorporates natural elements—biophilia—has a beneficial impact on our health and happiness. I can confirm that, anecdotally, in the projects I’ve worked on and spaces I’ve occupied. A biophilic meeting room is a natural refuge from the office—a space that might as well be screaming, “Relax! You’re not in a cubicle! You’re free to focus!” At least that’s how it seems to me.
I once collaborated with a healthcare company specifically motivated by the health effects of biophilic design. They wanted my help to create a suite of meeting rooms that would look beautiful and would also support their employees’ health and well-being. We worked together to incorporate the biophilic design principles of large indoor plants, plenty of natural light, and even an interior soundscape that featured soft, soothing sounds of rain and birds in the background. The result was a suite of meeting rooms that not only looked impressive but also made the people within them feel relaxed, focused, and—believe it or not—kind of well, in a way that’s hard to quantify but easy to sense.
Biophilic design connects people to nature, which is something we, as humans, are innately drawn to. We’ve been evolving in natural habitats for millions of years, so it’s really not that surprising that being in spaces decorated with natural elements would be good for us. These biophilic design elements would be good for anyone, but they’re especially beneficial to me as a student, considering the high-stakes, fast-paced environment I’m navigating while I work toward my degree.
We worked on another project to design a meeting space for a company that places a premium on mindfulness and mental health. A small indoor garden is integrated into the room, along with soft, organic materials such as wool and bamboo. The result is a retreat-like space that encourages more than just work-related gatherings. Employees use it for quiet reflection and to partake in practices that nudge their brains toward healthier mental states. We partly credit the design for this newfound ease of use to the meeting room’s biophilic elements, though we’re also quite fond of the room’s presence.
Biophilic design is, at its essence, about enhancing our human connections to nature, even when nature is far away. Nestled within a familiar room in an office building, a conference table can serve as a proxy for the calm of the forest and the productivity of the beehive.
Section 6—The Next Steps in Biophilic Design for Meeting Rooms
The applications of biophilic design in meeting rooms are truly groundbreaking. They are moving us toward what I believe will one day be known as the biophilic revolution. We spend an average of 11.5 hours indoors every day. Those spaces should be designed to promote our health, well-being, and productivity. Meeting rooms are where critical thinking and relationship-building happen. Yet we often find them to be soulless, windowless boxes. Biophilic design offers a way to remedy that situation. In our increasingly tech-driven world, we can achieve biophilic visualizations in meeting rooms that are more immersive and dynamic than ever before.
There’s an increasing fascination with biophilic design as a way to foster human well-being and sustainability in the built environment. This design concept understands biophilia—that innate human for nature—as a principal aspect of work enabled through Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. Meeting rooms can be ideal offices to foster the principal concept because they are bioadaptive to occupants’ needs, both temporally and spatially. Concepts from these designs can be scaled to other offices of the organization, achieving not just comfort but also other aspects of sustainable work environments: biophilic design principles, including eco-friendly materials, can enable the meeting room to have a sustainable, low-carbon impact; the design can include systems for energy-efficient lighting; and the climate of the meeting room itself can also be under the path toward net-zero sustainable comfortable conditions.
With a growing number of companies understanding the advantages of biophilic design, I see us moving away from the conventional, cold meeting room toward espaços that are alive, dynamic, and filled with not just human, but also plant, animal, and fungal presence. If you don’t believe me, just check out the meeting room at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California. It’s called the Thomas E. Bissell Conference Room. You might also look up the College of the Atlantic. Walking through those spaces will change you.
Biophilic design in the meeting room is not merely a way to render the space aesthetically pleasing. It is about creating a human-centered experience in that space. This can be achieved through various means, such as maximum daylight, the use of plants (in the right context), a soundscape that minimizes distractions and enhances focus, or by using materials that are not only sustainable but also conducive to a healthy environment. I believe these up-and-coming design tenets are going to push the meeting room toward an even more exciting future.
I am ready to proceed with my writing task and eagerly await the prompts that will guide me.
Section 7: Hands-On Suggestions for Incorporating Biophilic Design into Conference Rooms
If you’re thinking about using biophilic design for a meeting room, you can relax; it won’t cost a fortune or require major construction. And it will pay off in a room that works better for you and your colleagues. Here are some ideas about how to go about it, whether you’re working in a space that needs a refresh or you’re starting with a clean slate.
Make the Most of the Daylight
As I said before, biophilic design’s number one element is natural light. If your conference room has windows, arrange the space so the occupants can take in all that glorious daylight. Don’t be tempted to use windowless conference rooms as a reason to bury your team in the basement. Instead, use the best lighting you can muster. There are even lighting systems that can mimic the colors and intensities of sunlight at different times of day so that your conference room can become, if not a true suntrap, at least a reasonable facsimile.
2. Present the verdure
The meeting room can be a prime spot for biophilia if you simply incorporate plants. You don’t need a “forests” worth of foliage to make your biophilic case. A few well-placed plants will do. Start with a few different types of large plants, like a fiddle-leaf fig or a potted palm, and check if your space has any windows. If you do, that’s a must for the plants’ survival. Also, ID your meeting room’s footprint and find the five places within it where the plants will have the most impact—not necessarily in the corners or middle of the room.
Consider also using different kinds of living wall systems, if your plant procurement process allows for beauty over “green” practicality.
3. Introduce Earth’s Bounty
Earth’s resources—wood, stone, and bamboo—offer phenomenal potential for establishing Nature’s authentic connection in Space. The use of such resources for furniture and fixtures makes a strong statement about your commitment to sustainability and environmental stewardship. The very “naturalness” of their appearance gives a sense of authenticity to the Space. Textures that are natural in formation or that mimic Earth-formed textures can also be introduced throughout the Space, in wall coverings and flooring, in wayfinding elements and art, and even as small design gestures (like coasters).
4. Incorporate Nature-Inspired Sounds
We experience the world through sound as much as through sight. If you want to create a more casual and relaxing environment, consider biophilic soundscapes for your meeting room. Background sounds like birds, flowing water, or gentle wind and other nature sounds can be played through a sound system or created through physical elements like indoor water features. Just like how the soothing rustle of a tree wasabi or the gentle crescendo of a babbling brook lulls you into an auditory calm, the right meeting room sound can enhance focus and creativity without impinging on conversation.
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Establishing a link to the natural world has a demonstrated positive effect on mental health and… can happen even if your meeting room is in the heart of an office building. Work with visual design elements to make it seem as though there is a direct portal to the outdoors. If your office has windows, great—make them as big as possible. If not, do the next best thing and fill your office with art depicting the natural world. Even the use of appropriate sounds and scents can further transport you to the great outdoors.
6. Concentrate on the Well-Being and Comfort of Users
The aim of biophilic design, when applied to meeting rooms, is really to promote the well-being of the room’s occupants. With that in mind, how can the design of the space promote the comfort of the people that will use it? First, consider ergonomics. The human form is not all that well-suited to sitting for long periods of time in any of the traditional meeting room setup. For some, the Suite Life may indeed be a struggle. Finally, listen to the space. Acoustic balance in the room is as necessary as ensuring air quality that meets the ASHRAE Standard.
When you include these aspects in your meeting space, you set the stage for not only a lovely appearance but also for abundant health, steadfast well-being, and excellent productivity of those who occupy it. Ours is a biophilic meeting room design. That simply means this: We connect you back to the natural world in beautiful and significant ways. Connection may be the most important part of this whole equation.
Part 8: Biophilia in Practice
Finally, I want to share some actual biophilic meeting rooms that I have seen. These spaces left a lasting impression on me and beautifully illustrate how to assemble biophilic design elements in ways different from the typical conference room. These rooms go to show how the spaces in which we work can recreate an inspiring environment.
1. Amazon’s Spheres—Seattle, USA
For lovers of biophilic design, Amazon’s Spheres in Seattle are nothing short of a dream. These enormous glass domes house thousands of plants from all over the world, creating the rainforest “experience” in the midst of the city. The meeting rooms inside the spheres truly maximize this nature connection, with access to natural light and some of the best views of the abundant greenery and the plant life surrounding them. But if you thought these spaces inside the plant-filled dome were peaceful, wait until you see the “office” located on the other side of those glass walls.
San Francisco, USA, is home to Airbnb’s headquarters. There, you will find several meeting rooms that reflect the travels and explorations embodied by Airbnb. The design team has focused on creating “biophilic” spaces that are open and airy and that connect you to nature (even if you are indoors). One such room features a living wall that is part of a huge natural-light-packed arrangement. Another room actually has trees. This is not “happy accident” design. The design team is led by a “biophilic and human-centered” designer, who is very much on purpose with how to make a calm, creative, and inspiring atmosphere for the “braintrust” meetings that Airbnb’s management holds within their own walls.
Mountain View, California, is home to Google’s headquarters, its number of employees, and its income potential—thanks to Silicon Valley—a nice method for measuring ideas’ profits and losses. Of course, profit and loss are not the only things that Google measures. Quanta in, sweet lady; quantifiability out. So biophilia and the heady, earthy aroma of no worry as you work are rooms with no ceilings. Google may still be a young company, but it has grown up fast. And it knows how to make a roof garden. Indoor trees help with acoustics, and the living walls are nice.
But if you ask my friend the bee, to whom I am partial, the rooftop hive is probably a more significant installation.
The conclusion is in Section 9.
Designing a meeting room with biophilic principles is more than simply following a trend; it’s fundamentally changing the way we think about meeting spaces. At their best, these specially designed rooms encompass light, vegetation, and natural sounds and textures. Or at least they can, as architects and interior designers figure out biophilic ways to work both large and small into how we meet. The idea is not just room beautification but is instead tied to a more significant and beneficial outcome for organizations: better well-being, productivity, and creativity for those using the spaces.
Ultimately, biophilic meeting room design aims to create spaces that resonate with life and the natural order of the world. We aim to create meeting environments where people can feel fully alive and at ease, where the atmosphere seems to foster an unprecedented surge in creativity and collaboration, where the very space itself augments the well-being of all those who enter. I’ve seen firsthand how these design principles can make a tangible difference. I’m excited to continue exploring new ways to bring nature’s beauty and benefits into the spaces where we meet and work.
