Biophilic design is no longer a boutique idea in architecture and interior design; rather, it’s an emerging necessity. The appeal to human intelligence keeps growing as more research shows the physical and psychological benefits of integrating natural elements into built environments. This bid for creating biophilic workspaces demands standards/ certifications from designers, architects, or project managers looking to add this philosophy to their work. This definitive guide reviews five top biophilic design certifications/standards that you should be familiar with—all using real-world examples—where there’s merit versus where not so much.

WELL Building Standard

The WELL Building Standard, created by the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), has emerged as the dominant certification system for buildings pursuing enhanced health and wellness of occupants. While biophilia is but one component within a much broader approach to improving occupant environmental performance at nearly every level, it is given its own credit under this outcome-based platform. This concentration goes beyond aesthetic incorporation of those elements found in nature to include measurable improvement in the quality of air, light, and other factors directly affecting human health.

Criteria and Guidelines
WELL’s criteria in assessing biophilic design include a broad scope of elements. It starts off with an emphasis on air, including planning aspects such as pollutant levels and systems to purify the air that people breathe, then moves toward water-related quality and perhaps incorporating fountains or even water walls in their design. Another area of great importance is light, encouraging optimization of natural light or making features that simulate the way sunlight plays off clouds or vegetation outdoors. Material selection also falls under the biophilic umbrella with encouragement.

But WELL goes even further in more detail and drills deeper into other elements like soundscaping with nature-based sounds or perhaps scents that offer the olfactory equivalent of being around nature. It taps all human senses to make a holistic biophilic experience.

Real-World Example: Bank of America Tower, NYC
Located in the heart of New York City, Bank of America Tower is the epitome of WELL’s biophilic credits. The Towerality stands as high performance typified by an urban garden bringing into consideration sanctuary amidst skyscrapers to highly advanced air filtration systems that mimic natural air purities. Interiors are mainly utilized with light materials like stone and wood applied ablaze. Daylighting will also be incorporated into this building, where large windows and intelligent designs ensure natural light filters through even droopy parts within deeper sections of a floor plan.

The result? Reduced absenteeism, improved mental well-being, and higher productivity among the tower’s occupants, reinforcing the tangible benefits of adhering to WELL’s biophilic design criteria.

Advantages and Limitations
WELL’s strengths lie in its comprehensiveness and its performance-based approach, which extends far beyond the aesthetic appeal of biophilic design. It covers every sensory touchpoint an occupant might experience, therefore encouraging a more immersive connection with the environment.

However, one of the limitations to obtaining WELL certification is the associated expense. The detailed performance metrics require highly specialized tests and verifications that can be quite costly. Moreover, the process does not end with initial certification: in order to stay certified, one must undergo continual re-assessment, adding more costs along the way. While five-star WELL presents an extensive and meaningful means for implementing biophilic design practices on a project, it may just be out of reach for projects with small budgets.

Living Building Challenge (LBC)
The Living Building Challenge (LBC) is a certification program that adopts the most stringent approach to sustainable design, looking not only for minimizing harm but also for positive contributions to benefit both people and place. An official document from the International Living Future Institute, the LBC is grounded on an expansive deep ecology philosophy that also flows throughout its biophilic design elements. Unlike other standards focusing on reducing just negative impacts from buildings, LBC’s goal includes achieving a net-positive impact on human health—community—and natural resources.

Criteria and Guidelines
The Living Building Challenge is organized under a framework divided into several ‘Petals,’ which are subdivided into “Imperatives.” For biophilic design, the most relevant Petals are “Health and Happiness,” Beauty,” and Place.” These petals focus not just on the physical but also on the emotional aspects of design – something that sets LBC apart from so many other standards.

The “Health and Happiness” Petal provides guidelines that encourage the good physical as well as psychological health of inhabitants. It also touches on aspects such as natural lighting, airflow, and access to outdoor spaces. Under this is the “Beauty” Petal, where projects expect to integrate features that excite an experience of wonderment and awe-worthiness amicably achieved by integrating elements or natural processes into their environments. Finally is the “Place” Petal, which focuses on how well one’s built environment enjoys its coexistence with its ecosystem surroundings.

LBC mandates have set implicit requirements such as “Civilized Environment,” “Healthy Interior Environment,” and “Biophilic Environment”. For instance, the Imperative for a Biophilic Environment stipulates that projects must incorporate elements that connect with the underlying human-nature connection, like the use of natural materials, textures, and patterns or creating spaces offering views of nature landscapes or water bodies.

Real-world: Bullitt Center in Seattle
The Bullitt Center in Seattle bills itself as the greenest office building in the world, and its adherence to LBC’s biophilic criteria certainly backs up that claim. Its ‘living’ roof manages stormwater yet also serves as a green oasis for people living and working amidst urban cement; inside, it employs advanced daylighting techniques so natural light reaches every occupied space. Outside, the building makes extensive use of certified wood touts beautiful views to pr

The building doesn’t stop just at physical elements, inspired by LBC’s approach to emphasizing the psychological aspects of biophilic design. There are spaces specially designed for relaxation and quiet contemplation with visual and sound features that mimic nature—like water sounds and landscapes.

Benefits and Drawbacks
The advantages of the Living Building Challenge largely fall in its rigor and its holistic approach. It aims for regenerative design, not just sustainable design: a paradigm shift away from today’s typical approach to design as well as from historically ecocentric thinking that failed to consider humans and their well-being.

On the other hand, one thing that is its strength could also be a limitation – rigor. Meeting LBC’s biophilic design criteria would be an ambitious undertaking calling for significant expenditure of time and resources. Meticulous planning, specialized skills, and custom solutions will cost more money, too.

And because it demands so much, barring unique circumstances, some projects might fizzle out from meeting all its criteria, mandating strict adherence lest they run afoul of the standard.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)
LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (RE), is one of the most internationally recognizable US green building certification systems. Administered by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), LEED grasps a vast diversity of sustainable design principles connected to power efficiency water saving—and yes—biophilic design. Indeed, unlike WELL or Living Building Challenge, which have individual biophilic sections, Leed indirectly integrates these principles through credits within its scoring system.

Criteria and Guidelines
LEED assigns credits for a whole gamut of design aspects that get tied back to biophilic principles. One small example is the “Daylight and Views” criterion in the “Indoor Environmental Quality” section. Here, architects can earn points by designing such views outside their building so that a maximum number of occupants have exterior views-directly encouraging architects and designers to lay out where natural light penetrates deep into the building. In some ways, these are indirect applications of the biophilic principles because they aim at connecting people in the building with the naturally plentiful world outside.

The credits which deal with material selections and the sustainability of resources hold more implications in relation to biophilic design. In this context, using natural materials gains LEED points and facilitates enhancing the indoor environment through visual and tactile stimulations.

Real-World Example: California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco
LEED Platinum. The California Academy of Sciences building in San Francisco, by Renzo Piano and an exemplar of how LEED criteria can be integrated within biophilic design principles to great effect, holds a LEED Platinum certification. A wide range of design choices aligns with both, leading off with the “Living Roof,” fully covered native plant species that improve temperature regulation as well as offering something a little bit like even atop the building.

Within the academy, large glass walls facilitate natural lighting. Meanwhile, a four-story rainforest globe allows visitors to walk through a replicated Amazonian rainforest and experience nature directly within a built environment. In addition, the use of sustainably sourced wood and other materials gives one a sense of being enveloped by natural elements.

Benefits and Drawbacks
The benefit of LEED is its ubiquity. It’s a globally recognized system that many people understand and trust, from clients to contractors. Its broad scope also makes it flexible for incorporating biophilic design elements into projects; it doesn’t prescribe but rather measures performance similar to WELL.

However, the lack of very specific targeted biophilic design criteria can be a limitation. Projects could accrue high scores and make LEED certification but still fall short in delivering complete, comprehensive biophilic surroundings. It provides for “box-checking,” where the project does enough to collect points but doesn’t necessarily integrate as part of its overall architectural strategy with biophilic design.

A second point to consider is that while Leed gives direction around most individual elements, such as in materials or energy usage, it lacks direction about creating a synthesized holistically integrated biophilic environment. That would result in many missed opportunities within LEEd-certified projects for further integration of more human-nature connections.

Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES)
The SUSTAINABLE SITES INITIATIVE® is a specialized certification program that primarily focuses on the sustainable design of outdoor spaces. However, because of its association with biophilic design and the intrinsically related nature between outdoor spaces and natural landscapes, it holds unique relevance to architects and designers desiring to create an integrated unity between built environments within their natural surroundings.

SITES is a holistic framework that operates on point-based criteria and encompasses facets of water use, soil and vegetation, and material selection, in addition to human-health-and-wellness. What sets it apart is the attention being paid to the land itself – evaluating how design interventions affect ecosystem services and natural processes.

Under the heading Human Health and Well-being, SITES awards points for projects that “Connect People to Nature.” This may entail designing naturalistic landscapes, water features, and other elements to stimulate sensory engagement. Criteria such as “Outdoor Spaces of Social Connection” and “Places of Respite” imply that they should focus on ecological factors and how people will use the space, tying it back to biophilic principles.

Real-World Example: Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, Pittsburgh
Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens is a good case study of how SITES criteria could fall into biophilic design. The site occurs within a previously designated SITES Platinum accredited project and incarnates mindful design that improves human-nature interaction. Among the key features drafted in this site is “Garden of the Senses,” which cultivates visitors partaking through aromatic, fragrant plants, textured pathways, and natural soundscapes to experience nature with all senses.

The project then takes the idea further by embedding educational elements that urge visitors to relate more qualitatively with the environment. Signages provide information on why native plants were chosen, what benefits sustainable landscaping can bring to the locale, and even which types of birds served as inspiration when designing this garden. This level of engagement makes Phipps Conservatory a good space for aesthetic pleasure and an educative facility—fostering stronger bonds between humans and nature.

The specificity of SITES is also its strength: While other certifications typically focus on that building itself, by broadening the reach to include all surrounding environments, SITES becomes especially useful for large campus designs, parks – or any project with major outdoor design elements.

But this very specialization comes at a limitation as well. It’s not one-stop shopping for complete building design–rather, it tends to work best when used synonymously alongside another certification like LEED or WELL. In that regard, designers seeking a comprehensive solution may find their need to juggle two certification guidelines adds complexity and potential cost to what could be an already challenging process.

Comparative Summary: LBC, LEED, and SITES
Following the exploration of three main certifications- the Living Building Challenge (LBC), Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), and the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES)- has throughout this article brought us a great deal more depth to understand each’s criteria, guidelines, and forum for discussion. On the one hand, we find regenerative design principles becoming involved intrinsic to ‘principles’ in LBC; on another, inspiring gradient-based flexible point system from a company like Gensler with LEED, whilst there’s something about affirmation of outdoor space in SITES.

Design Focus and Intent:
Since LBC’s commitment to regenerative and holistic design ensures projects are sustainable and seek to elevate both human and ecological health, it places it at the cutting edge for those seeking groundbreaking sustainability and human-centered design.

LEED has long been among the most recognizable names in globally accepted standards as well as one of the most flexible. Its point-based system makes disparate ways of integrating biophilic elements possible, albeit without any specific requirements that outline how a project might be more thoroughly biophilic.

On the other hand, SITES fills that gap with a design approach dedicated to outside environments alone. In essence, his criteria derive from landscape architecture wherein biophilic design is integrated, particularly for large-scale settings.

Scalability and Versatility
LEED’s framework has been calibrated for flexibility and scalability, covering a large range of project types ranging from individual residential buildings to retail or commercial complexes. LBC has much more scope but calls for an involvement level that may not be possible in the case of small-scale projects or projects with less ambitious scopes. SITES is specialized and used mainly for a very narrow type of projects or in combination with another standard like the LEED approach with much greater coverage

As biophilic design is evolving, so will the field of certifications and standards. Frameworks will inevitably expand and specialize further as the industry matures; they are already beginning to do so. Designers would be wise to keep abreast of new updates within these frameworks because each new iteration promises us a stepping stone towards moving built environments closer into harmony with the natural world.

carl
Author

Carl, a biophilic design specialist, contributes his vast expertise to the site through thought-provoking articles. With a background in environmental design, he has over a decade of experience in incorporating nature into urban architecture. His writings focus on innovative ways to integrate natural elements into living and working environments, emphasizing sustainability and well-being. Carl's articles not only educate but also inspire readers to embrace nature in their daily lives.

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