When we consider biophilic design, we tend to think of it in terms of indoor spaces, with calming, serene environments formed by elements like the ones pictured above. But biophilic design is just as applicable, if not more so, in outdoor spaces. Biophilia is the innate human inclination to affiliate with nature and other forms of life. The term was popularized by biologist E. O. Wilson in his 1984 book of the same name. In Wilson’s view, an appreciation and love for nature lead humans to certain ethical principles—from which we derive our aesthetic judgments—about how we should behave toward our environment and the creatures that inhabit it.
This leads, in turn, to our designing in such a way that we might bring elements of nature to where they’re needed: to the inside of our homes, for instance, where we spend much of our lives. And with biophilic facades, we have the potential to begin doing this also, in a more direct way, to the outside of our buildings, where we meet the world.
Architecture at different scales interacting with nature has always intrigued me. The best examples of biophilic exterior facades relate to nature and emphasize it as part of their structure, not just their appearance. One project I know well is a mixed-use development wrapped in a green facade: it looks much more like a building clad in living plants than like a standard mixed-use building. When you shell up this building, the green elements seem integrated into the facade and the structure itself. This was not an afterthought of placing planters on ledges; the greenery was built into the facade in recessed panels within the facade to allow vines to “creep” naturally upward as they would in a standard living wall, drawing in the usual pollinators, shading the building’s interiors, and undoubtably purifying the air around the structure.
These initiatives demonstrate how a biophilic facade is beneficial beyond its appearance. The living components served as natural insulation—the greenery cooling the building in summer and keeping it warm in winter. More than that, though, they enhanced the building’s water management system, harvesting rainwater and letting it pass through in a way that the insects and birds that made homes in the facade could use. “Water management and energy use are huge issues in building design,” Gage says, and this is “one way to address them.”
However, not every biophilic building envelope requires the presence of flora to be meaningful. One project that left me particularly captivated showcased a building with a facade composed entirely of sustainably sourced wood from the neighboring region. Each plank was meticulously placed, offering a textured, natural semblance that allowed the structure to almost disappear into the canopy of trees surrounding it. What really wowed me, though, was the way the facade “aged” over time—no unsightly warping or other signs of typical synthetic materials. Instead, I observed a nice patina that the wood naturally obtained, as well was some pretty astonishing color shifts.
As the seasons changed, the earthy tones of wood pretty much guaranteed a shift in the appearance of the facade. And trust me, the way the sun interacted with the facade on any given day was nothing short of spectacular.
Biophilic exteriors must walk a fine line between aesthetics and the serious business of durability, maintenance, and sustainability. After all, what good is a facade that looks nice but falls apart before its time? In cities subjected to bad weather and pollution or where tight regulations make it hard to build anything at all, the truly biophilic facade won’t necessarily have the plants kind of biophilic city-dwellers are expecting. It’s not enough to just hang greenery everywhere; sometimes, one has to get the right biophilic materials in place. Stone is a classic choice that can be emotionally moving because of its natural heft and beauty.
Yet the right water features paired with stone can give a facade the much more flattering appearance of achieving nature’s true sustainable potential.
The biophilic facade has an undeniable allure and power to it. It exudes something almost hypnotic. But it really does what it does because of the way it’s oriented toward space and structure. It transforms perception. But of what, exactly? It is the thoughtful relationship between building and biophilic facade that makes me think of these structures as a giant “living wall” and a biologic facade that tempers the hard-edged architecture of the building itself. Both renderings invite interaction and reflection and hint at a structure that has something more resembling a personality than your average inanimate space.
During one visit to Singapore, I was especially wowed by the Oasia Hotel Downtown. My first impression was not just of the stunning greenery but of the very idea of the urban tower that the Oasia redefined. Instead of a cold glass-and-steel monolith, this biophilic structure is a kind of “living building,” with nature somehow in synergy with architecture.
When I say “nature,” I mean not just plants but also the flora and fauna that can coexist with them high above the ground and in the hotel’s abundant greenery. I might feel differently if I had a rooftop and a penthouse to occupy. I would still marvel at the 27 living walls on this structure that doubles as a hotel for thousands of plants.
The plants were key to the design, not just an afterthought. Their arrangement is an air filter, helping to improve the building’s and the surrounding area’s air quality. I see biophilic design as having enormous potential, not just for the people living and working in it, but also for our larger environment. The Oasia Hotel’s exterior facade is a wonderful example of a biophilic design applied at a large scale. Its “living wall” is an integral part of the building that expresses something essential about biophilic design: It shows how these principles can be applied in our cities to create urban environments that feel as if they are alive and healthy.
Biophilic building designs, both grand and modest, can offer a range of aesthetic and functional benefits. The most impressive examples are breathtaking, bringing humans closer to nature in the built environment. However, in my view, it’s the less showy aspects of biophilic design—most profoundly, the use of place-based materials—that can subtly tell a story about connecting architectural forms to their locales and the biomes within them. When I traveled to Alaska last summer and visited a couple of towns, I witnessed firsthand the types of materials that local builders use to construct forms that make sense in their contexts.
Both places likewise repurposed a lot of timber, so the material isn’t wildly different, but the overall look and feel of the buildings belies their naturalness and puts the built environment in juxtaposition to that of a concrete jungle.
For instance, look at the use of rammed earth in modern construction. As a biophilic exterior design detail, it’s hard to top rammed earth. Nobody will dispute that a rammed earth wall possesses an undeniable visual richness that feels, in some primal way, like home. But in my mind, the benefits of rammed earth go far beyond its beauty. Its tactile quality, which encourages touch and invites long, lingering looks—though maybe not quite as long or as lustful as those gazes you might cast upon a beautiful person—creates an exterior that throws the ground of a biophilic structure into haptic conversation with its immediate environment.
Another remarkable substance is weathering steel, known in this context as Corten steel, which, when exposed to the vicissitudes of the outdoors, develops a rust-like exterior. It seems a little counterintuitive to celebrate something that might make one think only of decay on a building facade, but Corten’s beauty, like that of any kind of patina, lies in its slow, sure transformation over time. Aging wood has a kind of dynamic, living quality. Corten has that too. Its “rust” really isn’t rust but the always-morphing, always-in-motion surface of a kind of natural bronze. Seen in a shadow, its sudden depth can astonish.
When it is paired with wood or Corten’s specific plant life, Corten’s “look” can fuse with that of the plants, stones, or any realm of texture one might be tempted to explore. And with Corten, one is tempted to explore.
From the projects I’ve seen or admired from a distance, the biophilic facades that I find best are those that adapt to their environment and do not impose themselves on it. This means working with the building’s unique climate, geography, and ecological context to create something that feels natural, even if it is in the midst of a dense urban core. For example, a green facade in a tropical climate will function differently from one in an arid region. The plants, materials, and structure must be chosen to thrive in that environment. The facade must also be sustainable at its location and within the chosen design aesthetic.
An aspect of biophilic design, especially as it pertains to exterior facades, that is often overlooked is the impressive array of benefits it can bestow. The facade of a biophilic building has the potential to enhance the building’s performance in many different areas. The appearance of the facade can provide a highly visible opportunity to display various energy-efficient systems that serve a dual purpose of making the building beautiful while also saving energy. And sometimes, the mere presence of a building can help underwater ecosystems.
Let’s consider a project I saw in Milan—Bosco Verticale, or Vertical Forest. Perhaps this is among the most famous examples of biophilic exterior facades in the world. At first glance, it’s simply a beautiful piece of architecture, with balconies that spill over with plants. But what’s really impressive is the precision with which each plant species was selected to ensure that it would actually thrive in this specific urban environment. The visual effect is staggering, but what really gets me is the way this building may actually help counter the serious urban pollution problem that Milan, like many other cities, faces.
By axially stacking plants in this way, the per-building system is designed not only to provide a “healthy” microclimate for the plants themselves (as a natural byproduct of the building’s otherwise largely negative externality because plants generally love a lot of sun and hate being too wet, and the building facade is supposed to do the opposite in both regards) but also to help work on a neighborhood scale to reduce both CO2 levels and the much more dastardly problem of noise pollution.
What thrills me about biophilic facades is their beautiful self-sustaining loop of benefits. In densely packed urban environments, the sorts of buildings seen in Bosco Verticale are fully justified visually, but they also have a very serious benefit that is hard to overstate. Plants growing on structures like that are smart, efficient, beautiful natural air purifiers. They remove particulate matter from the air, help cool the building, and thus reduce the need for artificial cooling systems, which reduces energy consumption. Though it’s hard to pin down precise figures (energy savings also depend on how a particular building is used — what hours, in what seasons, for what purposes — and on how much sun, wind, and rain a particular location gets), some estimates suggest that a facade like this could help reduce energy consumption by up to 30 percent during the summer months while also serving as a smart habitat.
I have also observed that biophilic exterior facades can profoundly affect our perceptions of maintenance and the longevity of a structure. Whereas the typical building facade is designed to be virtually maintenance-free, biophilic facades invite us to think of the maintenance of a facade more like the maintenance of an ecosystem. Unlike a typical exterior wall, which we might hope will last many decades without requiring much attention, a biophilic facade demands a much different paradigm of wall-friendly activities to ensure its health, vitality, and aesthetics over the long haul. This seems to necessitate a sort of change in thought process that is not quite the same as merely wishing maintenance to be more enjoyable and less of a shovel-ready slog.
In a smaller residential project, I found an apt illustration of what we are discussing. The climbing plants completely covered the building’s facade. But rather than creating the kind of wildness seen in some other green facades, the residents had ensured that the growing plants served as an impressive natural architecture. They had even formed a cooperative to manage the plants, ensuring that they were well taken care of and helming the plants in serving the building as a kind of living mural. I wondered whether it wasn’t a bit of overkill to have a team in place for such a cozy cooperative effort, but regardless, it was impressive and a very clear form of both architectural and social “greenwashing.”
Another main point to make is about the biophilic benefits of building facades. When people look at a facade, they’re looking at something that has been intentionally designed with their visual and even olfactory experience in mind. A truly engaged facade speaks to the inhabitant or passerby not only to the eyes but also to the other senses in a (mostly) benign way. Now imagine this engagement but with nature or nature-like elements instead. Facades that incorporate living plants, flowing water, or any malleable assemblage of natural materials serve two functions. First and foremost, they send the right signals to the brain by allowing humans to experience the facade in a way that is only a half-step removed from being in a natural setting.
Studies have shown that the closer people are to being in natural surroundings, the more happy, relaxed, and mentally agile they feel.
Biophilic exterior facades are on the ascent, and with them comes a shift in how architecture and urban planning are approached. The biophilic tendency in architecture means that buildings are designed to have a connection to nature. The term “biophilia” has its roots in the humanities, but it’s now entering the vocabulary of the hard sciences because of research showing how nature connections are important for human health and well-being. Urban populations may be more than ever before, but the concrete jungle is a jungle nonetheless; humans are apes with a strong knowledge of the need for trees (or artificial ones, as the case may be).
In my opinion, one of the most engaging aspects of this trend is how it brings human-centered design and ecological sustainability together. Biophilic facades provide more than just esthetic returns to humans who interact with them; they also benefit our larger ecological system. By using native plants and sustainable materials, and by incorporating natural systems like rainwater recovery, biophilic facades can help drastically cut a building’s overall environmental footprint. They allow humans to experience nature while simultaneously doing their part for a carbon-free future.
When I think about what lies ahead, I feel nothing but exhilaration at the prospects of this space. Technology, material science, and sustainability are changing our very perception of what buildings should and can be. Bizarre yet brilliant innovations—like panels of living algae that can be integrated into a building’s facade and harness the power of photosynthesis to produce energy—are already here. So imagine: an algae-filled world where every building somehow reduces its carbon footprint while actively regenerating its environment. I think biophilic design can help with that “somehow.”
To sum up, exterior biophilic facades are much more than a mere architectural trend; they are a linchpin aspect of sustainable, “human-centered” urban development. We are reimagining the facade as a living, breathing component of the built environment. The potential for compelling, restorative change is terrific, and we’re excited to see how design professionals will continue to push the limits of “what’s possible,” facade-wise and biophilically speaking.
