A new home where a friend recently moved was simply amazing in both design and smart-house technology. It was a wonderful melding of the natural with the smart and of the appearance of the two working together in harmony. She had a living wall teeming with plants and a waterfall that, together, produced a deliciously soothing and earthy ambiance right at the entrance. And where a hallway might have been, a ribbon of smart-house baseboard that was integral to the whole smart home operation let me know that the smart-house vision at work in her home was still very much in operation. And, even better, the Ribbon led me delightfully to a bedroom whose smart, subtle, and sufficiently fresh appearance made it just the kind of boudoir.
The concept of biophilic design tends to focus on humans’ innate and instinctive connection to the natural world. The design that employs these principles often works to manifest and make clear that instinctive connection that humans have to the natural world. Smart technology, on the other hand, is design that enhances the modern living space with efficiency, a certain level of “on-demand” functionality, and, in a variety of ways, makes clear our inhabited status in a potential diversity of “always-on” environments that tend to be experienced as convenient. In this blog post, we cover smart and biophilic design integrated into a living/working environment that is inherently healthful, and we conclude with some personal experiences that underscore the “always-on” culture’s transformative potential.
The Advantages of Merging Biophilic Design and Smart Technology
Merging biophilic design and smart technology is a winning strategy that reaps myriad mental health and efficiency benefits. Here are some examples.
Improved Welfare
Reducing stress, improving mood, and boosting overall well-being, these are but a few of the demonstrated gains of biophilic design in connecting humans with nature. When such designs are effectively paired with smart technology, the positive health results become all the more potent. For example, smart lighting can effectively regulate the appearance of a space over time, as if it were providing the natural light of the sun throughout the day. In such a case, lighting can not only stave off the deprivation of light that is a known health hazard, but it can also improve the light space-receive, helping us to see more clearly indoors.
The first time I encountered a smart home that incorporated biophilic design blew me away. Though it might sound hyperbolic, it isn’t an overstatement to say that the dynamic lighting system, which imitated natural sunlight as it changed throughout the day, almost instantly boosted my energy and made me feel more connected to the space I was in. It was a subtle yet potent daily routine enhancer.
Boosted Output and Concentration
When smart technology and natural elements team up, they can make for an environment that’s good for the kind of work that requires real brainpower. We’re talking about situations in which people need to be productive and focused. If you’s too, think of natural soundscapes that use smart devices as a way to muffle counterproductive noise and set the stage for calm in a big, open office space. Smart, adjustable furniture can give hardly ever-get-up-from-your-seat office inhabitants their best shot at lasting through the workday. And what can work for them? The wooden materials you surround them with. Or natural light.
My workspace at home is where I’ve really been able to put biophilic design and smart technology to work. My current setup: a sit-stand desk that remembers my ideal heights and a few different houseplants that certainly look nice (who can say “aesthetically pleasing” led by a good life?) but also that have been shown in various studies to improve concentration and productivity (mainly by delivering better air quality and providing a visual link to the natural world). They’re doing double duty. And speaking of smart, I listen to birdsong all day through a in-home digital assistant.
Sustainability and Energy Efficiency
Biophilic design can become far more sustainable through the integration of smart technologies that optimize the use of energy and nearly eliminate waste. Actually, all our current building practices produce waste. Even here, biophilic design has the beginnings of the smart solution since it demands no additional supply of energy or materials and no change in physical behavior to achieve a completely different visual and sensory outcome.
My friend set up an intelligent watering system in his garden not long ago. The garden is a lovely mix of native plants and a few vegetables, not really overburdened with greens of the cabbage-family. The irrigation system waters according to a schedule, but not just mindlessly. It takes weather data into account, for instance. And from a garden’s health point of view, integrating that technology so closely with the world of nature, well, his garden is not only sustainable now but flourishing.
Incorporating Biophilic Design and Smart Technology in Practical Terms
It is possible to combine biophilic design and smart technology in a cost-efficient and straightforward manner, as evidenced by the following practical applications of elements that bridge the gap between smart technology and biophilic design in one’s home or the workplaces.
Intelligent Lighting and Sunlight
Natural light patterns can be imitated now using smart lighting systems. Biophilia isn’t going to reach its full potential unless you embrace technology to use solutions like this to make the built environment operate like the natural environment in these ways. For light and good health, change to a way of life that maximizes natural lighting. The dawn or dusk “glow” found in ways of life that use electric lighting as a garnish instead of as a main course helps set the stage for biophilic life. Natural light and good health belong together.
I have smart light bulbs in my living room, and they offer a range of light. In the morning, these bulbs shift from a cool white to a warm light; in the evening, they change from a warm light to a warm amber. For me, as a sleep-deprived graduate student, these bulbs are incredibly nifty. They manage my sleep-wake cycle by shifting the light spectrum, so they actually help me sleep better. These smart bulbs, the windows, and the automated shades make the living room really bright during the day and super cozy at night.
Intelligent Climate Control and Indoor Air Quality
Ensuring a cozy indoor climate is key to well-being, and the latest smart climate control systems almost guarantee it. Smart (remote or highlighting indoor climate as a controlled area) thermostats, in collaboration with wireless or connected air purifiers and humidifiers (a.k.a., “house weather stations”), are now deftly personalizing indoor environments to the comfort preferences of occupants, who themselves are indoors, with increasing consistency.
My bedroom now boasts not only a wireless thermostat but also an app-controlled air purifier. Ensuring the best indoor air climate and quality is essential for general health. Still, it’s also of particular importance when one is recovering from a mold-induced illness. These two items alone help me to eliminate the largest swath of mold toxins in my indoor air. They also let me more nearly simulate both the “clean room” and “outdoor air” conditions that I mentioned earlier as being key parts of the mold avoidance sabbatical. Meanwhile, indoor plants also “inhale” carbon dioxide and “exhale” oxygen, allowing for an additional improvement in the air quality when they are added to a room.
Smart Furniture and Natural Materials
Integrating decor with natural substances like wood, stone, and bamboo can give any place a warm and inviting aura. Moreover, when these elements are paired with smart furniture, the effects can be even better as both functionality and appearance reach new, unprecedented heights. For example, you couldn’t as yet improve on a desk that is already smart in the ways that it has been designed to be adjustable to a user’s preference for working in either a sitting or standing position, like the SmartDesk 2 – Home Office, whenever it comes to using friendly, sustainable materials for smart living. But using wood in your workspace is just the beginning. There are many other furnishings and presentation elements that can be integrated for enhancing a smart home’s friendly appearance with sustainable, smart living ways far beyond the unfriendly and unsustainable appearance of a Texas Instruments Speak & Read learning device.
My dining room hosts a not-so-common table. Wireless charging stations are available across the tabletop, and the material itself is repurposed in an especially cool, green way, since it’s made from the reclaimed wood of classic Oregon barns instead of, say, the easily renewable bamboo often used for eco-furniture. But the killer app is the under-table storage.
Transformation: Personal Stories
The real influence of integrating biophilic design and smart technology is best appreciated from the stories of those who have experienced it. Here are a few such tales for those who think that big data can’t create a human-nature connection.
A Smart Home That Offers Peace and Quiet
My friend lives in a house designed around the biophilic principles of letting in lots of natural light and connecting with the natural world. The living room is beautiful; it has a large window, plants, and the light changes a lot. There’s a smart fireplace that can make almost-to-real-kind-of-fires. You get the warmth and the sound of the wood popping, making you feel like you’re moving toward some wonderful, crackling fire. From the high-tech living room to the very delight of the top of the stair landing, where there’s a sheltered perch spot and another big ass window, you’ll want to roam around.
An Efficient Domestic Workspace
Amid the global health crisis, one place I felt I could control was my workspace. Too many Zoom calls were scrambling my data signals in a row and leaving me no time for the kind of remote work that remote work is supposed to make possible. The night before starting my redesign, I dreamt of what could make it all better. In my dream, I was doing four things: incorporating biophilia, maximizing technology, using natural light, and working with my favorite colors. Biophilic design makes me happier. And the free use of all wood elements and a wall-to-ceiling window in my favorite workspace make me happier still.
A Garden That Lasts
The integration of smart technology and the natural world can truly be seen in a local community garden. The passionate people who tend to their plots are aided by smart tech in a few ways. The smart irrigation system waters crops even before the garden tender has a chance to see them droop. Another aid? Smart lighting—reliable solar-based electricity, that ensures the plants that need it can get just the right amount at just the right time.
Pulling it All Together
When you bring together biophilic design and smart technology, you can establish not only a very good-looking environment but one that forms a real basis for how well human beings feel in a space. Those two elements together can make any building a “smart” building. We’re moving into a time when personalized comfort is going to be every bit as important as anything you can see in a space, when it comes to making people feel good.
Evaluate your space: Eye your current environment and locate the places where you can incorporate technology and nature. When it comes to lighting, think of what is going to make your space look nice and not outdated. Can you use a Philips Hue light bulb that you can make look more like incandescent illumination? When it comes to smart technology, can you put in a Nest Living Room Hub that is going to look like an overstuffed armchair no matter what color you put on it? Once you’ve done that, can you work on making a “reconfigured environment” that looks like Holler Design’s Reconfigured Environment? Is that too much? Is it just right?
Begin with the Basics: There’s no need to overhaul your lifestyle all at once. Start with the essentials that can make your everyday life significantly smarter. Replace your old necessary tools with upgraded smart ones: regular bulbs with smart bulbs, houseplants with indoor ones, an ordinary clock with a smart wake-up light, and more. Complete the tasks that are the simplest and easiest to make your home suitable for your smart device to work with.
Put sustainability first: Opt for intelligent technology that fosters energy efficiency and lasting viability. Search for not only “renewable” but also “reliable” energy products that save water and don’t increase the amount of waste in landfills.
Customize your area: What is your region? Make this answer clear not only to the person asking it but also to yourself. One effective way of doing this is by featuring systems, natural materials, or lifestyle choices present within the covered space that are uniquely you. This could mean anything from a smart garden to a smart lighting setup. But most of all, open up the possibility that when someone enters the covered space (let alone lives in it), the person benefits from your interpretations of systems and nature, ascends within your environment.
Remain updated on the current advancements in biophilic design and smart technology if you want to find innovative methods to improve your living and workspaces. Living and working environments are taking a futuristic turn when biophilic design and smart technology come together and integrate. This is all about putting the “bio” back into our buildings. Do we know that these environments work?
Advocates of biophilic design say yes in a range of tones, from the certain to the suggestive, and point to an emerging body of evidence, discussed below, that for the most part supports their view. Living where “nature in buildings” (or not), with or without large doses of “natural light,” and working without large doses of “fluorescent light,” evidently make us feel and function better.
If you’re building from scratch, overhauling a fixer-upper, or just attempting small tweaks on a budget, both smart tech and biophilic design can be crucial for the interior designer with an eye for the future. In case it’s unclear just how valuable these two tools can be: the first can help you turn your future house into a low-impact environment, with every machine connected to the internet and working to turn it into a lighting and heating system that should save you money in the long term. The second can make the people who live inside it saner, calmer, and happier by allowing them to live closer to the natural world even in the middle of a city.
Why not begin today? Take a look at your space and consider how you can marry the natural world and the technological one in which we live. Whether it’s with smart light that imitates the sun’s movements, indoor plants that help clean the air, or the use of natural materials like wood and stone, you have the power to make the simple changes that can make a big difference in your everyday life. Here’s to carving out more space in your life for nature and providing a place that’s always nurturing your inner efficiency nut. Be fruitful, but do it in a smart and efficient way.
