Biophilic design might be trending on social media, but it’s far more than an aesthetic—it’s a transformative approach to creating spaces that make us happier, calmer, and healthier. In this episode of Deep Green: Deep Cut, METROPOLIS editor in chief Avinash Rajagopal dives into the science and philosophy behind biophilic design with Bill Browning, founder of Terrapin Bright Green, and Catie Ryan, director of projects at the firm. These leading voices in biophilic design share their insights on the profound impact of creating spaces that connect us to nature.
As Terrapin Bright Green marks the 10th anniversary of its 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design, Browning and Ryan reflect on how their research has shaped the field, including the introduction of a new pattern: “Awe.” They share how these principles deliver measurable outcomes in projects like the reimagined Portland International Airport, where stress-filled spaces became calming, passenger-friendly environments under the terminal’s nine-acre roof. Tune in to learn how biophilic strategies—from nature-inspired fractals to immersive natural elements—are improving well-being, reducing stress, and redefining the built environment.
This season of Deep Green is produced in partnership with Mannington Commercial.
Resources:
This transcript was generated by an automated service. In some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Avi: Welcome to Deep Green. I'm Avi Rajagopal, the editor in chief of the architecture and interior design magazine Metropolis.
And one of the side effects of my job is that the For You page on Instagram is full of design videos.
And if that happens to you too, you know that one design trend keeps popping up all the time.
It usually involves rooms that are absolutely smothered in plants, or buildings that have like trees and creepers growing all over them. You know what I'm talking about. Hashtag biophilic design.
But before it was an influencer aesthetic trend, biophilic design was actually conceived as a way for buildings to help human beings.
The idea is actually quite simple.
Because human beings evolved with nature, on the African savannah, seeing or feeling certain natural phenomena or patterns triggers a physical and emotional response in us.
If we understand those patterns, We could use them in buildings to make people happier, calmer, more excited.
You get the idea.
We've had some conversations before on this show that have touched on biophilic design with the architect Moshe Safdie, for example. We'll link that episode in our show notes. But for today, for Deep Green's new season, we decided to go to the real experts, the folks who tell everyone else how to do biophilic design.
Bill Browning and Katie Ryan from Terrapin Bright Green.
For almost two decades now, Terrapin Brightgreen has been consulting with architects, builders, and organizations on how they can work with nature to make spaces that are better for human beings.
And just last year, they released the 10th anniversary edition, that's 10 years, folks, of their book, Terrapin Brightgreen.
14 patterns of biophilic design, which I think is just a Bible for anyone interested in this approach because it lays out those 14 patterns, those 14 ways that we can design for the best biophilic impact.
Here are Bill and Katie.
Bill and Katie, thank you so much for being on Deep Green.
Catie: Thank you. It's great to be here.
Bill: Yeah, we're very happy to do that with you.
Avi: Well, we can't possibly have you on without asking you to do something that I'm sure you do every single day of your life, which is defined biophilic design for us. What is biophilic design?
Bill: So biophilia is literally the term, from the social psychologist Eric Fromm. It comes from the Greek roots bios, life, and philia, love, love of life. The working definition that we tend to see most frequently comes from, uh, Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson, which was, uh, innate affiliation with life and lifelike processes.
so what we're doing is we're trying to find, uh, how experiences of nature affect people and then translate that into the built environment.
Avi: This idea of bringing the built environment and the natural environment closer together, is at the heart of so much of the work we're doing today in buildings. there's been such a big movement in the space since you founded Terrapin Bright Green, how do you fit your work around biophilia into The broader rubric of sustainability services and consulting that you do as a as a firm
Bill: So going back before Terrapin at Rocky Mountain Institute, we were collecting early case studies on green buildings and we were seeing unexpected gains in worker productivity and didn't really have a mechanism to, uh, explain them. along the way we wrote a publication called Greening the Building in the Bottom Line.
There was eight case studies of increased worker productivity as a result of green buildings. Co author was able to, uh, pull some money together when he was at the Department of Energy to do an experiment looking at what would happen when 700 people moved out of a windowless factory. for Herman Miller, the furniture manufacturer, into a brand new daylit building designed by William McDonough.
And it had windows all around that looked out onto a restored prairie landscape. One of the researchers from the federal government who helped put the experiment together, Judith Heerwagen, said, I think if we see a gain in productivity, it may be due to an effect of biophilia. Which, in 1995, was a term I'd never heard.
partway through the experiment, we didn't think we were going to get anything out of it, because the data was really, really messy.
until the data was sorted by shift.
nighttime shift did not have a gain in productivity. The swing shift's data was mixed, And the daytime shift had a significant gain in productivity. Thank you and we realized light levels were the same throughout, but the, the predominant difference was during the daytime, you could see out to that incredible landscape.
that sort of was our wake up call around biophilia
Avi: Fast forward 2014, you published. The 14 patterns of biophilic design, which you just launched the 10th anniversary edition of, Tell us about finally codifying some of those key patterns in biophilic design.
Catie: kind of following up on, on Bill's experience back in 2010, we started talking to people from Delos Living who are saying, where's the research that shows you know, what the benefits are of designing communities, certain ways to have a health impact, a positive health impact based on like using nature.
And so we started digging, Collecting more research. That was my introduction to biophilia. Um, so 2010, around that time we started writing the economics of Biophilia, right? and in 2012, when we published that book, Bill's colleague, friend, Mary Dage picked it up and said, you know, this is something that we can, we can use it, uh, Google.
Why don't you come and help us look at what the possibilities are. And so when we were working with them, we were bringing together all the research that we could find to really understand where the opportunities are, what is the science? Is there something here supporting these different experiences And that was the beginning of the development of these 14 patterns. So we did our work for Google for several years, but, an outcome for Terrapin. Was the 14 patterns of biophilic design. So each pattern, is based on having enough robust enough collection of science but. You know, we also recognize that there's, there are other experiences in nature, but these 14 were the ones of all the, I don't know how long our list was, Bill, do you remember? It wasn't, supremely long or anything, but you know, but there were probably 20 or so on the list.
But in the end, it was the 14 that had the research that we could say, yes, there's something clearly here.
Bill: and ones that we could, that you could then translate from nature. into a building or into a built environment. Um, so it had to be something that you could actually be actionable and, and create. We categorize them into three broad categories. Uh, the first we call nature in the space, which are direct experiences of nature, in the built environment. daylight, breezes, presence of water, The second bucket is natural analog. So these are indirect experiences of nature. Things like using natural materials, using, biomorphic forms, using, fractal patterns, nature based complexity and order fractals. These are things that occur a lot in nature, um, and then can be translated directly into human design.
Then the third category, we call the nature of the space. And these are spatial conditions that occur within nature. Um, starting with some of those that go back to one of the underlying pieces of work that you'll see referred to, which is called the Savannah Hypothesis in biophilia, saying all our evidence is that humans evolved on the savannas of Africa and it makes sense that we would respond to conditions found there in other places.
And so some of those spatial patterns are directly come out of that.
Catie: The research all seemed to fit very, I shouldn't say cleanly into these three categories because there's absolutely this overlap.
We definitely have discussions about, you know, whether, complexity and order is just an analog or is it also a spatial pattern? It's like, well, it can be, it depends on how you apply it. So it's not meant to be some rigid framework, right? It's just, you know, It's a, it's a language to talk to get people to, from different disciplines or even within your own discipline.
Just be talking through these ideas and, um, with the supporting science there.
Bill: what we saw was different patterns supported different outcomes. If I know the needs of the people using my space, I can use that to help filter which pattern might be most appropriate to support those outcomes for those people.
And some patterns support multiple outcomes and some only support one or two. And so it's, 14, now 15 patterns is a lot to remember. And you certainly wouldn't want to try to use all of them in one project.
Avi: Tell us about Pattern 15.
Catie: we had to tell you all of that to get to, to 15 because in fact, back in 2013, all was on the table as a potential pattern. but we weren't quite sure how to define it as a pattern, um, because we believed potentially it was actually the convergence of several patterns.
we weren't finding the science that really showed that it was, um, enough to call itself its own pattern. So, it got shelved until maybe what, five years ago, it started, it surfaced again. Um, we started to see research, um, emerge or just be discovered, like rediscovered.
In some cases, uh, began to paint a more clear picture of, of what the experience of all really does to us or for us. and so that kind of got exciting for a lot of people beyond like, not just us. We started researching and writing about it. And so it was really exciting. Um, To kind of officially unveil it or include it, uh, the 10th anniversary celebration to like include it as, as an official member of the 14 patterns, just even though it's a 15.
Avi: I think this is a good place to explain to folks who maybe are not used to using your structure. What is the kind of outcome, say, that awe is connected to? What kind of research finally convinced you? And how does it become a pattern?
Bill: Most of us, when we think of awe, we think of the grand experiences of awe, Walking up to the edge of the Grand Canyon for the very first time, and you the people stop and their eyes get wide and the mouth drops open. so that's the part of the physical response. and we now know that the brain response is unique.
It's literally a, an overloading of the medial prefrontal cortex. And so the, the scientific definition that we hear of awe is two parts. The first is, an overwhelming experience that then second requires you to recalibrate. so you can have an overwhelming experience but it isn't on until you have those two together, the need to recalibrate.
Avi: we know so much more about our neurological response to the built environment and our neurological response to nature today than, than we did when you first started out.
in many ways you've been maybe too successful in talking about biophilic design because it's a term that's really caught our imagination in the design world.
a lot of product marketing. Says biophilic when what they mean is, you know, we put a wood grain pattern on the style.
Catie: does. It actually reminds me a little bit of Portlandia when you just like that put a bird on it. We just like put a tree on it and suddenly it's biophilic. And that's not really the case. and it's not that it's not meaningful, it's just not as meaningful as it could be, or well understood, you know, as understood as it could be. The opportunity isn't understood as well as it could be. So, um, you know, the idea of better understanding the science before coming up with a solution.
Like, why are you putting plants there? What kind of plants are you putting? Um, are there opportunities other than plants? Or, If you want to think more biocentrically, like how does, how do the plants actually contribute to the ecosystem or the building function or what have you? So I think there's, there's a broader opportunity that is being lost when we're just putting plants and then calling it biophilic, especially if it then contributes to maintenance costs and other things like that.
Bill: in DC there where I live, there's some law firms that did these huge, spectacular green walls in the lobby, which is fantastic for the folks at the front desk. But here's this huge expenditure that the vast majority of the people just walk by,
Catie: Yeah. It's really a marketing
tool.
Bill: So if I'm going to, you know, go to some of the more elaborate expenditures, I want to put them in in a space where people can really see them.
So we're working on a corporate headquarters right now, a small one that has a central atrium. And a lot of the workspaces look into that central atrium. and conference rooms as well. And there's a pretty spectacular green wall being built in that space. And so that's great because that suddenly means that all over, all day long, people can see it from when they're in a conference room, even many of them when they're at their workstation can see it.
And so that's, that's an expenditure that's a really great benefit.
Avi: not all of us get to see the Grand Canyon every day, but nothing about the Grand Canyon per se prevents anybody who is actually there from experiencing the full law of it, right? And I think there's that openness of spirit that's, I think, inherent in, you know, the work of biophilia that, that you've been doing at Terrapin, um, that speaks to this a little bit.
Bill: So one of our publications, uh, that's referenced in other things we've written, was an experiment that was put together by an architect out of Baltimore, Jim Detterman.
And it was, what could we do as minimal interventions in a sixth grade mathematics classroom in inner city Baltimore? And so it was literally using carpet tiles, wallpaper, window blinds, and a couple other measures, And then watching what happened to the students over the course of a year. And what we saw was a dramatic improvement that was, uh, a great example. We also, a friend of ours, an artist, Muriel Phillips, in the height of the pandemic, created a break room, for hospital staff at Mount Sinai in New York.
And the neuroscience team at Mount Sinai then monitored outcomes with those folks. And we saw something in that data set.
that we also saw in the school and it wasn't until just a handful of months ago we suddenly realized people use that room again and again and again and again. our normal assumption is that the first time you experience a room or a space it's going to be the most dramatic and then over time that you're just going to kind of ignore it, right?
It's just
Avi: Get used to it.
Bill: You get used to it, right? You're habituated to it. And yet what we saw in these data sets, even though people are maybe habituated to it, and it's maybe not as dramatic as first time, what we see is the physiological response improves over time
Catie: it's just a reminder that having a green wall in your atrium. That's only visible when you enter and leave the building is really not optimizing the opportunity. You put it in your office where people see it all day long, every day that they're there, that impact.
is going to persist over time. It's not just that momentary, like, passing through the lobby. So you're talking about a hospital and school, but there's no reason that that couldn't be true for an office or other, um, space type where you have people who are regularly attending.
Avi: yes, our human bodies have a response to nature or nature like experiences, um, and that for so many years now you've been collecting the science. carefully vetting it, conducting studies to figure out which of those patterns can actually be applied in the built environment and can actually produce results.
You have a connection between certain types of patterns and certain outcomes for human beings, um, and you're finding new insights all the time, like the addition of a 15 pattern, or this insight that repeated exposure is actually makes these experiences even more powerful and more transformative for people, both of which I think are absolutely incredible.
I think there's an, there's another piece. to your work, which we were lucky enough to publish in the last issue of Metropolis, which is that you can then instrumentalize certain patterns of biophilic design to address Very specific human experiences and help people through, high pressure or stressful or boring times in their experience of building.
I'm talking, of course, your work with the Portland Airport, the Portland PDX terminal, um, ZGF Architects just designed an expansion of that terminal. It's a project that's been talked about a lot. But honestly, one of the aha moments that convinced me that Metropolis should do a story on the project was hearing you, Bill, present your research on that project, um, in New York about, you know, a year ago.
talk to us about the design of that space what passengers actually experience as they go through the terminal. Just take us through your methods and your outcomes, both of you, on that project.
Catie: the first effort, which was initiated by ZGF was to look at all the different user types.
Like who is using this airport? Once we start spelling out who they are, we can better understand what types of experiences they need, or are likely to encounter as they walk, go through a space.
and then mapping out.
Their journey from arrival to the airport and departure by plane or arrival by plane and departure, through one of the various exits. So understanding what path they might take, where they might need to pause, um, what might stress them out. And that got mapped out to understand where, um, what path they would take, but also where were the overlaps between the various user groups.
And then On top of the overlaps, where were the overlaps in stress experiences? The stress inducing experiences were pretty clear once you started to, to overlap those pathways. we're not going to put biophilia everywhere.
So how do we concentrate the experiences to have the best, outcome for the most number of people. There's a number of locations throughout the airport where these targeted, um, interventions happen. And with each of those, there's certain patterns that are used, Like in a bespoke manner specific to that location, but then there's other patterns that you'll see in many locations like the use of plants, is quite common throughout the space, but it was deliberate to have canopy trees in the seating area right after.
Uh, security so that you had this protection overhead, but you could still see throughout like what's to come ahead. and it was, you know, separated slightly from the past, the, the pedestrian flow. So you don't feel like you're in anyone's way. So there was some very practical, like, normal planning strategies that it went into it, but it was how does biophilic design and and the strategies.
Weave into the, the planning and programming in a way it becomes. Integral and, um, fully embedded in the design. that definitely informed the roof design. For example,
Bill: So, the skylights that are over ticketing and, uh, the check in desks, um, produce a light that's sort of that misty, uh, you know, when it's a little bit rainy and that it's, it's a filtered light.
And that's also intentional so that you never get beam daylight shining down on the folks who are working at those desks, trying to see the faces and check people in. but then the biggest skylight is over the forest that, Is that transition from ticketing and bag drop to where you, you're going through the marketplace and you first see the lines for queuing for TSA.
Um, and that one also, the perimeter of that giant skylight has a wood lattice that comes down that produces amazing light patterns on the floor along with the trees there. so.
Catie: we wanted to encourage the, those beams of light. Very
Bill: Yeah, exactly. uh, but over the actual TSA screening area, TSA needed equipment hanging down over, overhead and that could have been really ugly, but instead there's a, um, mezzanine over that area and conference rooms above it.
So now all of a sudden you have a wall that's 30 feet high, um, and 130 feet long overhead. So that wall has vertical wood slats and the wall is covered with an LED screen. And the Port commissioned, uh, local artists and videographers to do images and scenes of nature.
Catie: So many airports get it wrong.
Bill: oh yeah, I mean, the standard is you, you come out and you're dragging, you're trying to repack your bags, put your shoes on, and all you've got is this awful little metal bench.
Right? So what if instead you're sitting, um, on a almost boulder shaped planter that has, has a ledge where you can stand and repack, or has an area where you can sit very comfortably at various heights, because different people are different heights, and put your shoes back on and get things back together, and you're sitting under a tree, um, and plants there, and, you know, If you're going to be, if you want to have recomposure, why not have a space that actually supports recomposure?
Catie: But it's also, um, interesting because that's solution. Had to be done slightly differently than say seating somewhere else because in certain places We want to encourage people to dwell and to take in the nature and to observe and maybe even work if they need to but in recomposure You need to recompose yourself and move on.
So we need it to work. It had to provide that experience, that biophysical experience without encouraging too much dwell time.
Avi: it's a holistically integrated approach. but if you look at some of the earlier examples, you've got a bill like that classroom where there might be very quick, simple product replacement level kind of surgical in design moves that also make a difference.
And so. That's one of the beauties of biafric design is that, at its greatest, say, it is this holistic, integrated, fleshed out, experience, but it can also be You know, a really beautiful ringtone on your phone, and that's fine, too,
Bill: you know, and what's nice it extends across all space types, all, all building types. and the outcomes, you really support both the social and economic components of, of those buildings and those spaces. Thank you.
Catie: Brings you back to economics of biophilia.
Avi: you know, that was one of the really transformative piece of work that Terrapin put together, I'm sure you have conversations about return on investment or payoff for implementing biophilic design strategy. What are those conversations like and how can more people who are listening to this podcast start having those conversations with their project teams, with their clients, with folks who are investing in their work to say, you know, this is something worth looking at and, you can scale your investment and you can have, commensurate outcomes.
Bill: I noticed that we were having conversations with prospective clients, uh, and talking about biophilic design, and their heads are sort of nodding and they're going, well, that's really nice. And we were realizing that we weren't getting past really nice.
And so we needed to go past really nice to say, Hey, there are big numbers associated with this.
Catie: when it gets down to like who to talk to, or how do you talk to your teams about this, your clients about it? And I do think it can be, um, it can differ depending on your, your building type of your project type of the industry you're in. Because, say the workplace. you're going to have immediate results that will affect your bottom line potentially immediately.
Same thing with hospitals, you know, with patient turnover and, um, like staff retention and things like that. But when you're talking about, so, Schools and communities, there's tests, you know, this kids might do better on tests, but the, the true outcome and the maybe financial return isn't going to happen for a long time.
So considerations for investment have to be relative to the timeline that you're looking at. Right. the other perspective that I, I struggle with on projects is the cost, the value engineering. phase of a project. And if, if the biophilic design strategy isn't, a priority, like if that, that long term health benefits or cost benefits isn't already factored in and your biophilic solutions are not integral to the architecture and the engineering, then it's very easy to cost engineer it out.
keeping that in mind upfront, um, can help mitigate that risk.
Avi: that's another way that biophilic design really just strikes true to the heart of, you know, what is the, what is the responsible, beautiful, impactful way that we should continue to create on this planet. Katie and Bill, you are experts at the, at the very, very forefront of, of biophilia.
Um, you think about this day in and day out, um, much of what you say is, is new to us and new to those who are listening to this podcast, but I would still love to ask you about what's new in your field that you're excited about. and we'll get to that in just a minute. I just want to remind everyone who's we will be linking to many of the resources that we mentioned during today's episode in our show notes.
So don't miss out on that. on metropolismag. com. Of course, we have a very quick. Primer to biophilic design written by Stephen Kellert, who was one of the early contributors to the biophilic design movement. we will also be linking out to, 14 patterns, now 14 plus, of, uh, biophilic design.
Uh, we encourage all of you to please, Get yourself a copy. Immerse yourself in this research. It is. It can be truly transformational to your design practice to the way that we human beings live in and interact with the built environment. So, It's also going to be very easy to accessible from Metropolis Mac dot com. But you can also, of course, go to Terrapin Brightgreens Uh, website to uncover all the other amazing resources that they have uh, we're going to get Bill and Katie and now on what they're excited about on the frontiers of biophilic design.
Catie: even though we've been talking about all for a while, it's still very new. And so I think there's, there's still excitement about that and what the possibilities are, because it is a tricky one. Like how do you actually integrate it into your project? Like, can you, it depends on the project.
I don't know. So I would say that that's one thing that kind of excites me or, or, Something to look forward to see how, how architects actually do employ it. but the other is, uh, you know, at our 10th anniversary event, there were some people there who were very new to the topic and to see them light up and get excited and feel like they've.
On something that they either didn't know exist or that they were seeking out and just finally found their people. And it was just so wonderful to see that there are people that. Are really excited about bringing these ideas into their projects or their you know, some of them are teachers and they're bringing them back to their school to teach their students something new and exciting.
And I, I think that's really promising. Um, there's still so many people that that could benefit from accessing this information and you know, that was part of the reason that we, we make these publications in the first place. And one of the reasons that I've loved being a part of this process over the last, what, 16 years or so is that our, the, the research and publications, we do what we can, but make them free and accessible so that it's not just the big firms that can do this.
Anybody can do it to some scale. And, um, so I really am excited to see what people do to do with it.
Bill: Like Katie, the topic of awe is still fascinating. I'm particularly getting interested in micro experiences of awe and some of the research around that. You know, when we think about awe, we tend to think about the, the grand scales, but Franklin Wright used, he called it compression and release, which is, you know, inducing small experiences of awe in his houses.
Um, and, uh, Also getting interested in how, uh, biophilic design can be used to support people, um, who are neurodiverse. And so we've done a little bit around that and, uh, particularly worked with some, uh, graduate students who are doing really good work on that. And then I'm personally getting more and more interested in nature sound.
and how we respond to these, to nature sounds and um, and just, yeah, bird songs. One of them obviously the sound of water is one that we've already done some research on and written about. Uh, but there are all these really interesting, uh, nature sounds and, and acoustic environments that I think we, um, I think that's one of the next things we want to look at.
How do we bring those into the, into buildings?
Catie: And then on the outdoors, I would say, how do we bring some of these. You know, when we think of people think of biophilic design on the, in landscape, it's really largely about the plants. But there's. The spatial experiences, which can really make it just such a, like a beloved space that people care for.
Um, so that, that, Prospect and refuge and mystery and all, like, I feel like we can do a better job. I think there's a lot of opportunity and, Kind of a fun thing to look forward to.
Avi: Thank you for all the work you've been doing over the last couple of decades. and partnership and collaboration you've provided to design teams everywhere that's impacted many of the spaces that listeners of this podcast have worked in, walked in, been in.
Or intend to visit.
Catie: Thanks
Avi: there's opportunities everywhere
Bill: Thank you.
Catie: been wonderful. Go to Portland.
Avi: Deep Green is produced by the Surround Podcast Network. This episode was produced and edited by Rob Schulte with support from Rachel Senatore and Lauren Volker. A big thank you to our guests today, Bill Browning and Katie Ryan.
We're talking to the biggest experts on sustainable architecture and design all the season, and a new episode will drop every month.
So catch the next episode of Deep Green in a month, wherever you get your podcasts.