BIOPHILIA – IN SEARCH OF CONNECTION Present on our blue planet, the aggregate of every ecosystem is called biosphere. In it, every ambience of Earth correlate with one another, coexisting interconnected and interdependently. EARTH – 4,51 BILLIONS OF YEARS The human species is solely one amidst millions of life forms on the planet.

The first appearance of humans is dated far as 200 thousand years ago. Sixteen thousand years ago, agriculture surfaced, and only six thousand years ago, the cities were developed. This information shows that our history is essentially connected to natural contexts in an almost absolute way.

SANCTUARY To give you an idea, up until the 1950s, two thirds of the population still lived in rural or wild areas. It was only by 2007 that most people on our planet came to live in urban areas. I have the privilege of being able to go to places that probably nobody knows, and I bring, from there, these stories.

These images carry a message. The message is clear. It is sad to be in a world without trees and birds.

Tom Jobim used to say that. My nature photography is not only animals and landscapes. It must have humans as the epicenter, as the center of all this.

We must reconciliate ourselves with nature. First, the aspect of influences from forms of natural beauty on designers. Architects, as you may.

More and more, creators, designers, are turning towards the perfection already drawn by nature. I believe, the same way as I, probably, got sensitized by Brazilian’s nature force in order to integrate this in my design creation, which was simpler and easier, since it did not depend on execution… I did not need to transform the shape of a leaf into furniture. I had a lot of freedom.

Actually, I made many mixtures between design, the perfect body and nature. You remember that. Openings in which the perfection of the female body matched 100% with Diamantina Plateau etc.

etc. So much so, I could earn the right to use the design, made by God to help in my communication. We must reverence a living being that represents millennial life in a biome.

And the fact that this biome represents the fundament of men’s life on the planet. We are still not able to perceive a human being outside the environment, outside nature. This may happen, however, is it worth it?

Isn’t it more reasonable to preserve what we have got and cohabit with the wonder that is nature the planet gives us? Cities are an extremely recent phenomenon in our history. In this new built scenario, human race lives a new script, with dynamics focused on productivity.

With heavy schedules and pressure for good performance, contemporary Homo sapiens is obliged to share their attention with various activities, causing great difficulty in their focus and contemplational depth. Twenty first century society is already being called by scholars as Fatigue Society. This habitat of concrete-built ambiences is too recent compared to our entire existence.

Our brain has been mapped to be a hunter/collector of species, as we have lived for millions of years, in direct touch with the wilderness. During great part of the history of our species, we used to live in another habitat, in another relationship with nature. Only quite recently, with the Anthropocene, even more with post-modernity, cities have become what they are for us: places where nature acquired an almost museological status.

It is now quite determined by dispositions such as alleys, by the control, by the almost artificial way in which we recreate what’s natural. I would mention here the experience of the German Romanticism, the landscape painters, the very French impressionists, who were around this problem: How can we recapture and bring the landscape back to our lives? We at least remember that it is there, in a painting on the wall, which proposes us that another way of life was possible, that the present one is not compulsory, and that [past] is not, in an indefinite way, the extension of what we have today.

So, nature has got this function, not of nostalgia, but of reminding us that there are transformations, that I could have been there, I could go back there. Speaking of which, the creator of the concept of empathy, einfühlung, [by Robert] Vischer, was an arts scholar, an architecture scholar, and he used to reflect upon this experience, our exile in the cities. In this scenario of overcrowded cities and corrosive enterprises, not by chance disorders follow the same frenetic rhythm.

The World Health Organization estimates that anxiety, which manifests itself through panic attacks, high levels of stress and forms of compulsion, afflicts one in every twenty-five people on Earth. In Brazil, we are the champions, proportionally. Almost 10% of the population suffer from this psychic disorder.

Biophilia is our innate, natural capacity of feeling good in certain places. All of us, when present in specific places, feel great pleasure. Quality of life does not have a direct relation, as we used to think in the recent past, only with the economic development of a country.

In a micro scale, quality of life depends on the sense of peace. Tranquility, serenity, so to say deep ecology. I think radicalizing every behavioral and mental disease, this ongoing crisis made men research a bit more about its causes.

One of the causes is the matter of ambience. Neuroarchitecture is fantastic in this sense, because it studies exactly the influence of spaces in human brain, in happiness and behavior, so this is nice. Neuroarchitecture, that is dated from the 80s, has got inside it biophilia.

From the moment when scientists were able to measure neural connections, it was possible to know how each ambience could impact men, through happiness, sadness, melancholy, or euphoria. In the workspace field, Google is fantastic. Wework is also developing their space fantastically.

This is because they have studied a lot the matter of neuroarchitecture and biophilia in the workplace. Today, we spend more time working than inside our houses. And to be able to bring this comfort through natural elements, natural materials and vegetation into our workspace is fundamental for people to be much happier and productive.

Spaces projected this way provide much more attention, lessen the number of sick people – that is, they do not skip work –, and there is no turn over that is, people actually want to work in these places, because it’s way more enjoyable and it makes people happier. Every enterprise that builds an ambience with biophilic design is already an enterprise that thinks about its workers, that thinks about men. So, this is the question, the philosophy of the enterprise.

One of the ingredients that may help to improve the quality of life of its workers is biophilia. Hospitals, for instance. Patients heal 30% faster in spaces with windows, vegetation, or natural ambiences.

However, hospitals do not work only with patients, but with doctors and nurses as well. The daily tension is so great that the leisure, comfort, and rest ambiences for these professionals are being thought of in a biophilic design, so that they can go back to their duties charged and energized. Perhaps, the yuppie generation, consisted by workaholics who used to work and eat on the working desk… All of this brought about an exhaustion from working in offices, in conditioned ambiences, between four walls, with artificial lighting.

Suddenly, people said, Enough! Now I want to go outside I want sunlight, I want vitamin D provided by the sun, I want to be in touch with nature, in a cozier and nicer ambience. This provided transformation, and the new generations are valuing this greatly.

To bring nature altogether with architecture… this would happen even before the consolidation of the term biophilia, already in a feel of a necessity people have of being able to be in touch with nature. However, an anthropized, humanized nature. I think biophilia comes, in fact, to ratify the concept of a human need.

The question is that we are animals, rational animals, and that we belong to nature, whether we like it or not. We came from it. We got too distanced, be it because of cultural issues, since the countryside was quite hostile, and the urbanity promised greater progress – which, in fact, did not happen, but consisted in previous decades’ dreams… And, today, people are going back to nature.

I do not believe biophilia is only fad. Perhaps the name is transitory, [however] the concept is scientific, which ratifies a human need of being closer to nature. In São Paulo, an enterprise specialized in corporative architecture and design has been studying projects which associate productivity with quality of life.

One of the recent projects is part of its own head office, where many concepts of biophilic design and architecture were applied. What biophilia ended up putting in numbers and science is exactly the connection we have with the divine, not only the divine within, but the outer one nature, in this case. What biophilia does is to give importance to this connection with God outside us, and to bring elements into the space – especially corporative space, where there are many limitations, demands, programs, needs that take you away from the garden, plants, natural materials.

The idea is to, somehow, provide materials that relate you to nature inside the office. Biophilia has got scientific basis that proves what we, intuitively, already know. We, human beings, have a better relation with ambiences in which nature is present.

It is not necessarily about the plant itself or the floor itself, but something that invokes natural ambiences. In fact, you do not need to have the paving or the wild moss itself inside the office, since that would not make sense. The carpet has important applicability for acoustic matters, and also for conceptual, design matters, not only for covering the floor.

As far as innovation goes, this was a fantastic project. Something we will see more and more in new projects of internal ambiences and architecture, especially corporative ones, is the moss. Moss is a product that grows in the Arctic Circle.

The main thing is that it is a preserved moss, so it does not require any kind of maintenance, necessity of watering, or replacing. It is a type of moss completely made for this kind of situation, in which you need something long-lasting, at the same time providing immediate alive green into the ambience. People who visit the place make many compliments.

Workers also enjoy working there, which is the most important thing. The idea is to, somehow, provide materials that relate you to nature inside the office. The studies about biophilia prove that the ambience containing nature brings more inner peace, tranquility, and all this turns into productivity.

For those who are rational managers… there are also these guys, who want results. “Does it cause productivity? So, let’s put biophilia.

” In this biophilic consciousness wave, living, inhabiting… the place where I work, where I am at… these are the places where it is fundamental to have biophilic reconnection. More and more, there is no way back. More and more, we are implementing biophilia in offices.

Its importance will become more important and clearer over time. This is an ever-present tendency now. If it will fade with biophilia or with digital scenarios to come, we do not know.

However, the necessity of living with more quality of life, in touch with nature, is undeniable. This path is irreversible. I think man, as he managed to make neural measurements, and discovered he is way happier in natural ambiences, there is no way of reversing this process.

I think we are not able to tame technology. But behavior… this will not change. People love nature, and this will last forever.