As screens, smart devices, and nonstop connectivity continue to proliferate, technology and nature appear more and more to be at odds. Long ago, they would have been relegated to separate domains. But as biophilic design continues to break ground, it’s clear that technology and natural environments can and must work together to create the kinds of rich, immersive spaces that our increasingly distracted brains and tired eyes so desperately crave. And if there’s a next frontier for biophilic design, it’s in pioneering the kind of biophilic tech ecosystem that would make Apple, or any other major tech company, envious.
The Technology and Nature Balancing Act
Technology and nature need not be at odds with each other. If anything, they can—and should—complement one another. The most exciting aspect of biophilic design today is how technological advances allow us to enhance our relationship with the natural world. Take, for instance, adaptive lighting systems that mimic the sun’s natural circadian rhythms. These aren’t just energy-saving tools; they bring the subtle ebb and flow of daylight into indoor spaces, with remarkable effects on our well-being. A few years back, I stayed at a wellness hotel in Norway that had this type of lighting installed in its guest rooms. Waking to a soft, sunrise-like glow in my room—while it was still pitch-dark outside—felt so right.
These systems enabled me to unwind in the evenings, gently transitioning to a sunset-like dimness that signaled it was time to sleep. The algorithms at work in the room were effete; it had the phenomenon of the moon lighting up the night. The light was warm, and its hue was pushing toward amber. I was in direct command of a biophilic environment, a potent one made even more so because of its light- and color-saturated conditions. Light is certainly a major factor in biophilic design, and it’s one that fell in the favor of the adaptive lighting technology that was featured. Unlike the previous models of artificial lighting that were energy hogs, this one was synced up with an app that I could amend at any moment to basically fit the lighting to any physiological condition I’d care to articulate, and then some.
However, illumination is but a solitary piece of the puzzle. Consider the transformation of air purification systems as another shining example. In more recent times, air purification systems have seen the emergence of bio-reactive walls as their defining technology. Bio-reactive walls in high-rise buildings can purify the air using live natural elements, such as moss and other lichen, efficiently and beautifully. There’s even a wall that accomplishes all of this without using artificial light. One of the best real-life instances of this technology that I’ve encountered happens in a high-rise lobby in Singapore. The living wall in that densely packed urban area performs its vital function, but it barely registers on the modesty scale compared to the natural feature that shields residents of the building from being noticed as they’re also shielding residents of the city from harmful pollutants.
The biophilic wall worked with technology to provide the plants with the light and humidity essential for their survival—an extraordinary meeting of form, function, and biology. Biophilic technology has the potential to extend beyond our personal environments and into the built world, where it can help create a more profound connection between people and nature. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are being used in exciting new ways to install interactions with nature into the concrete and glass of our urban spaces. On the surface, this may seem like a strange application of these otherwise very useful technologies. Why use AR and VR to create simulated interactions with nature? Shouldn’t these technologies be employed instead to create as-yet-unrealized, natural spaces within the urban environment?
I recall taking a trip to an urban park in Tokyo that had been precisely installed with augmented reality. Not just any VR, mind you, but one that allowed the person experiencing it to bring a digital twin to the physical space they occupied. Visitors to the AR installation could, through the mediation of a smartphone, see virtual ecosystems overlaid on the park’s real environment. As one strolled through the installation, it was possible to interact with, and even imagine the presence of, digital flora and fauna. For me, a dense Tokyo park carved into the side of a mountainous area, albeit one very much surrounded by tall buildings, felt the same as standing atop a ridge in a forest where the closest human settlement might be many miles away.
AR and VR are also being applied to the context of education, with the explosion of these technologies providing a new set of tools to inspire immersive, nature-based lessons. The kinds of experiences that can be afforded through these technologies allow students to visit biomes they might never otherwise set foot in—like the Amazon rainforest or the kinds of deep-sea environments that Professor Gilly visits. These technologies give nature-based lessons new heft and immediacy.
Interactive urban landscapes have seen advances too, such as those in Amsterdam. The project “Smart Urban Forest,” for instance, employs technology to monitor the needs of the city’s trees, shrubs, and flowers. The very landscape seems to be aware of its vitality, as the systems governing it in the smart urban forest respond to perceived changes. The interactive quality of the landscape is what makes this project, in my opinion, and the following two, I will describe, especially impressive. The flora in these three urban spaces—Amsterdam, the following one in Chicago, and a third in Houston—seem as if they are in environments that are truly ecologically aware.
This biophilic technology makes the urban environment more livable and nature centric by using intelligent, adaptive tools.
The digital and natural worlds can connect even more directly through the devices we hold in our hands. Have you ever owned or used a fitness tracker that you wished would tell you to take a walk outside? Plenty of not-so-smart apps now come with the unnecessary user prompts that tell you to “get in” or “stay in” a zone, without giving any real incentive other than the usual guilt associated with not moving. But some fitness tracking devices and digital applications programmed to monitor and motivate our daily physical activity have begun to tap into something increasingly called the “nudge” theory.
The Future of Biophilic Technology—Intelligent Ecosystems and Sustainable Urban Living
When we gaze into the crystal ball that is the future, we see biophilic technology as an ecosystem disruptor akin to the introduction of the Internet. The Internet transformed human society as well as the built environment and, in a manner of speaking, our interaction with them, both individually and collectively. The biophilic smart city is an upgrade on all three counts. “Smart city” has been a buzzword for at least the past decade, and it promises not only an integration of technology into urban infrastructure but also a more efficient and effective interaction between humans and those urban systems.
Across the urban environment, sensors embedded in everything from buildings to infrastructure are monitoring a new set of metrics. These smart city landscape sensors are both ethnographic and diagnostic. They allow planners to quantify human experience and environmental conditions across space and time. Everything that can be tagged, logged, or tracked in human interaction with the urban environment can be measured with these new sensors.
Take Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands, for instance. This stunning modern architectural wonder combines a multitude of green spaces, water features, and nature-inspired (“biophilic”) technologies to create an urban ecosystem. This place is all about sustainability—especially in what goes on outside. The exterior of the building is designed to promote biodiversity. Biophilia is a big part of the Marina Bay Sands. “Sands” is actually a misnomer—as in an “ocean” to “sea floor.”
This is a great example of biophilic technology being used to create that space—and increasingly, individual homes offer the opportunity to use this space even more. Smart home tech offers an unprecedented opportunity to use biophilic design to make homes even more functional, even more aesthetically pleasing, and yes, even more environmentally responsible. On a smaller scale, individual homes and offices are becoming increasingly biophilic due to the integration of smart home technology.
A system can be used in your home that will determine when you’ve been unduly stressed out. Your smart home system could sense the emotional atmosphere of your household and adjust the lighting to create a calming, cozy natural ambiance. It could even suggest that you spend time in your indoor garden, reminding you, in a gentle pattern of nudges, to enjoy the neglected pleasures of your living space.
Vertical farms that take on the guise of sustainable skyscrapers are just one potential future for biophilic design. There’s also the move toward nature-infused public spaces—think parks and other interactive installations—inside and outside buildings. These are future spaces that might be biophilic in principle, if not in practice. Importantly, these future spaces might also be homes to something beyond everyday humans. They certainly won’t be homes to solitary confinement prisoners, as was once the use of this Milwaukee building.
This technology can take the bond between humans and nature to a level beyond what we’ve experienced so far. Adaptive lighting, interactive landscapes, and intelligent urban ecosystems are all components of what I call biophilic technology. And the beauty part of this story? The future of biophilic technology promises not just to create lovely spaces but also to reimagine at a profound level the way humans relate to their spaces—nurturing both people and the planet.
What Lies Ahead for Biophilic Technology – Intelligent Ecosystems and Cities
Creating sustainable cities is no small task, but the payoffs from biophilic technology can help us reach that goal. The most tantalizing payoffs may be found in the concept of “intelligent ecosystems,” where cities absorb nature and vice versa, forming two interdependent layers of a single operable system.
The concept of biophilic technology extends beyond an occasional rooftop garden or even a new kind of urbanism that might embrace widespread “nature” in the city. Such would be the vision of biophilic infrastructure: a kind of urbanism where every building could harness nature.
Take, for instance, an envisioned metropolis of the future where biophilic avenues channel rainfall into verdant gardens. These lush, urban spaces serve as both the magnificent centerpiece of the biophilic street and the channel to natural irrigation, which is likely to reduce the flooding risk and the associated damage that heavy rain events can cause. And in case you think biophilic spaces can’t pump up the visual appeal of a street, consider also that, in 2021, clear water being pumped through biophilic fountains will cost the same amount as buying a gallon of water through a retail outlet.
I have witnessed this with urban gardening projects, where ingenious technology assists residents in keeping a community garden thriving. These tools can measure soil moisture, sunlight exposure, and pest levels. But what really intrigues me is how these projects engage people in the act of gardening. The garden becomes a place where people gather, using technology not to disconnect but to contribute to the collective maintenance of a living system.
Both passages are taken from the same article. The second is a rephrasing of the first. Listening for the voice of the author when I blame daring women for ruining community gardens has made me better at inhabiting the rooftop of a living system where people and plants thrive together.
Building communities in this way can make residents feel they are part of something bigger than themselves and encourage them to take better care of their shared environment.
Biophilic technology serves what some might call a dual purpose. On the one hand, it is about creating better spaces for humans. On the other, it is—could be—about supporting biodiversity. Interest is growing in the development of “wildlife corridors.” These are green pathways that allow animals to safely and securely move through urban areas that otherwise might cut them off from other populations. Biophilic tech could play a crucial role in the development of any such corridor in its two-dimensional version—obviously, in the maintaining of habitats in and along the corridor.
Biophilic technology is revolutionizing the design of our built environments. It’s not merely a trend; it’s a meaningful, sustainable way to integrate technology and nature for future reliance. Whether through smart ecosystems, augmented landscapes, or adaptive urban designs, biophilic technology has the potential to make us—and this is said with intent—increasingly reliant on the wonders of nature, whether it’s in the form of the built environment or in the landscapes over which we have dominion.
Concluding Reflections on What’s Next for Biophilic Tech
Biophilic technology will be pivotal in tomorrow’s cities, homes, and workplaces, as society moves ever deeper into the digital realm. But we must take care to meld tech and nature for the good of both—a good that, we would argue, is first and foremost about preserving, or in some cases reestablishing, a natural connection for all of us. Whether it’s through a digital device or a verdant city street, we must feel like we belong to the natural world.
Ensuring access to biophilic technology for everyone, rather than making it a luxury for a privileged few, is one of our most important tasks. As designers, architects, and technologists, we must use the voices of our professions to advocate for policies and practices that will make biophilic design a standard part of urban planning. This will involve working for green building codes, supporting sustainable technologies, and insisting on public spaces that privilege human-nature interaction, among other things.
We must also keep on extending the frontiers of biophilic technology. Its application in K-12 education, for example, is just in its nascent stage. Generative design is a powerful tool for urban and architectural planning. Its results can be dramatically improved by giving architects, urban planners, and other design professionals real-time access to richly interactive models of the natural systems that surround their works. Such access will enable these professionals not only to comply with modern sustainability requirements but also to do something far less common: nourish the biophilic tendencies that all humans possess.
Looking back on my diverse range of projects and ideas, I feel nothing but a surge of optimism for the future. They have enlivened me and, more importantly, have caused me to believe in a future where innovation leads to a world where nature is once again part of our everyday lives. Smart homes, interactive landscapes, and sustainable urban ecosystems are all on the horizon, and I truly believe biophilic technology is the key to getting us there.
