Rebuilding Biophilia Brendan Russell Dillon Master of Architecture Thesis 2007-2008 A Thesis submitted to the Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Architecture in the School of Architecture and Interior Design of the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning May 30, 2008 By: Brendan Russell Dillon Bachelor of Fine Arts in Architectural Design, June 2004 Massachusetts College of Artificial Committee Chairs: First Chair: George Thomas Bible Second Chair: Elizabeth Riorden Rebuilding Biophilia: Reconnecting Man with Nature through Architectural Design Biophilic design balances human needs with the value and considerations of natural environments and processes and incorporates aspects and qualities of those elements into architectural design. This serves to reinforce man's instinctual connection and relationship with those systems. There are two basic, symbiotic, motivations for reinforcing this relationship. First, a strong biophilic relationship with the environment has many beneficial effects on human health on the physical, psychological and intellectual levels. The second reason is that a strong relationship with the environment will result in people acting in a manner that is conducive to the environment’s preservation, as a result of having formed a personal relationship with it and having gained an appreciation of its value. Biophilic design nurtures these relationships through the use of five basic principles: affiliation & affinity, homeostasis, prospect & refuge, ecological ethics and wellness. These principles can be applied as methods for developing a design, as well as evaluating a design or built project. Table of Contents Abstract Table of Contents Part 1: Biophilia and a Birth in Nature Part 2: The Way Things Were Biophilia and Evolutionary Psychology Adaptability of Man Psychological evidence Evolutionary History Part 3: The Way Things Are Health and Medicine Childhood Development and Nature Deficit Disorder Workplace Health and Productivity Evidence Based Design Biophilia and Environmental Attitudes Architectural Attitudes Part 4: The Way Things Could Be Deep Ecology and Biophilia's Place in Philosophy Sustainable Design versus Biophilic Design Part 5: Biophilic Design Developing a Biophilic Design Ethic Biophilic Principles Building Elements Methodology Part 6: Design Project Building/Typology Project/Building type: Precedent Analysis Project/Building type: Program Site/Context Current Summary/Implications for Design Illustration Credits Bibliography Part 1: Biophilia and a Birth in Nature I was born in the woods. I don't say born in the literal, clinical sense. My mother wasn't having labor pains amongst oak trees, or giving birth upon a bed of pine needles and moss with deer, squirrels and birds in attendance. Rather I was born in the woods in the sense that once upon a time, I was a young boy possessing an impressionable mind and insatiably curious nature, a tabula rasa in the Aristotelian sense, which existed and inhabited my body until the woods and natural landscapes slowly and inexorably etched themselves upon it. My soul was filled up and inebriated on the outdoors. These experiences and memories helped to form the core from which I have developed as a human being and are at the very root of what drives me today as a designer and as a human being. When I was five years old, I watched as my father built his dream home, a two story, three bedroom log cabin atop a hill in the woods. I vaguely remember visiting the property before they started clearing or building anything and thinking about how far off into the woods we were, there was an amazing feeling of isolation grasping my mother's hand standing on a worn dirt track that was far from being a road, yet one day soon would become our driveway. The oak and pine trees around us seemed to have swallowed us whole, cutting us off completely from anything that resembled civilization. It’s one of my oldest memories that consists of anything more than a vague impression. The house was in a neighborhood that was somewhere in the gray zone between suburban and rural in the way that perhaps only a neighborhood in one of the oldest towns in New England could be, though it was only loosely connected to that neighborhood by the fact that our driveway began on the same street as those of our neighbors. You couldn’t see another house from a single window in our home nestled on the top of a hill. Peering to the south through the pine and oak trees that surrounded our house you could see a small pond that held turtles, bullfrogs, pickerel, sunfish and the occasional bass. To the north and east was a cranberry bog and only to the west did we have neighbors, though again the great trees occluded any possible view of these. Even in winter they were often hidden due to the large concentration of pine trees. Whenever my siblings and I would begin the call to our mother for entertainment “We're boooored!”, a cry most every parent has heard at some point or another, my mother in her wisdom and desire to not hear us whine or complain would shuttle us outdoors. Often though we needed no encouragement or shuttling but instead we found our way outside ourselves. And for good reason... there was so much to do and see outdoors, why would we have stayed inside? There was a pond to fish and explore, a hill to climb, rocks and logs to flip over, snapping turtles and muskrats to seek out and track and flee on those very few occasions we found them, trees to scramble up and forts to build. Winters brought snow forts, snowball fights, icicles, sledding and animal tracks in the snow. We had what felt like our own private forest to explore and we took to that expedition like Lewis and Clark. In summers we would visit my grandparents at their small cottage in the woods. As isolated as my parents’ house was, the cottage was even more isolated, bordering the edge of one of the largest state forest preserves in Massachusetts. We would sleep with four, five or even six of us in a room, crowded in with cousins, aunts, uncles and assorted guests. During the day we’d chase sunfish while swimming through the clear, clean water, wander the long dirt road and woodland paths picking plump blueberries, watch the birds soaring across the lake and tease and chase the squirrels and chipmunks. My great aunt even trained one chipmunk to sit in her shirt pocket and eat from her hand. Like so many children, I thought that the life that I lived was common to the lives of others; it was all I knew. I thought that what I had grown up with and experienced was the norm. I knew nothing else to compare it to. As I got older I realized that the great majority of my friends and classmates hadn't had similar experiences. They didn’t know what a blue jay sounded like, had never seen a heron, and couldn’t tell a bluegill from a crappie or a red pine from a white. A red pine usually has needle in groups of two or occasionally three, a more rounded cone and tends to be taller and less full, while a white pine has a more elongated cone, needles typically in clumps of five and a broader canopy. The needles of a white pine also feel softer than those of a red pine, didn't everyone know that? What surprised me even more though was that most of them had no interest in these things at all. We didn’t have such experiences in common and, as a result, our values were different. Eventually my siblings and I came to drift towards the type of lifestyle our classmates had. This was partly a result of wanting to fit in with our friends and partly a result of my parents moving. It wasn't long before the three of us were spending much less time outdoors, instead watching more television and playing computer and video games like 'normal' young Americans of our generation. What kept me rooted and connected was that every summer we still visited my grandparents’ crowded cottage and every time I was there I would reconnect with that childhood spirit that was so steeped in nature. Once we arrived at the end of our long journey over dusty dirt roads through the woods, I would immediately head down to the pond. The immediate trek to the water was a conscious decision, but one without rationale behind it. My grandfather often joked I was going to check to make sure that the pond was still there, but so far as I could tell I was simply drawn there. Some part of me missed the pond, the fish, the turtles and the bullfrogs without even thinking about it. Once there, I would sit at the end of the short dock, looking, listening, smelling and just absorbing the feeling of being there. I’d look for the great rock on the opposite side of the pond that my cousins and I had sworn from a distance was a manatee… the half dead, half alive lightning tree which now grew parallel to the ground after being struck by lightning and knocked over. Turtles would climb up the branches that extended into the water to bask in the sun. How many people knew turtles could climb a tree? I’d look for the hawk that I knew nested in a tree on a hill just to the west and which I'd often see pinwheeling slowly in the sky.