Biophilic Design Is Helping Cities Get Back to Nature
Buildings that incorporate a natural experience are growing in popularity.
4 min
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Waiting out the pandemic in a high-rise apartment close to the centre of a major international city has been a relatively calm experience for Kenny Yeo. Last year, the 32-year-old marketing director bought his first property in London’s Canary Wharf neighbourhood, one of the city’s two main financial districts.
The apartment is in the Wardian London development, two newly-built towers of 50 and 55 stories which are crammed with greenery. In total they contain 100 different species of exotic plants from around the world, with a lobby which resembles an opulent greenhouse and a swimming pool fringed with palm trees.
Mr. Yeo moved into his two-bedroom apartment in the building, where prices currently start at $1.4 million for an 845-square-foot unit, in September 2020. “All the green was one of the main things that stood out for me when I chose the flat,” he said. “Even the colour palette inside the flats has a lot of green.”
During Britain’s two subsequent lockdowns, Mr. Yeo felt “almost a desperate need to reconnect to nature and having all the plants in the building is very calming and relaxing,” he said. “I come from Singapore, which is nicknamed the garden city, and it reminded me of home.”
Mr. Yeo also began to add his own greenery to his home. “In my previous apartment I did not have a single plant,” he said. “Now I have about 16 of all different types and I have become a complete plant nerd.”
International house builders are rapidly realizing how appealing buyers like Mr. Yeo find biophilic design, the official term for buildings with features like plantings, outdoor space, large windows and natural ventilation.
“It is about making our buildings more symbiotic with nature,” said Mat Cash, a partner at Heatherwick Studio, the British company that designed the Eden development in Singapore. Completed last year, each of Eden’s cantilevered balconies is filled with tropical plants. Not only do they give the building’s residents private outside space but they also offer shade to the home below.
“There is a human desire for the restorative and calming benefits of nature,” said Mr. Cash. “It is something which is innate in humans. It is not just about planting, but about fresh air and natural light, and even in a very hot and humid climate natural ventilation works very, very well.”
There is air conditioning at Eden, but Mr. Cash said residents should only rarely need to use it. Keeping their balcony doors open to allow a breeze to blow through their homes, he said, also helps “blur the lines between inside and out.”
Eden’s 20 apartments, each four bedrooms and four bathrooms and measuring just over 3,000 square feet, were listed in 2019 and the final home was sold in May 2021. They were priced at an average of $3,549 a square foot. The average price of real estate in Singapore is $1,719 a square foot, according to research by CBRE.
In November, residents will move into the 200-apartment Valley, a multifamily building in Zuidas, the financial district of Amsterdam. Among conventional-looking office buildings and hotels, Valley is a visual anomaly with its richly planted, terraced balconies. Tenants will pay up to $3,481 a month to live in one of the two-bedroom, 1,216-square-foot apartments, said a spokesman for developer Edge Technologies.
Valley was designed by Winy Maas, co-founder of Rotterdam-based practice MVRDV, who has created public walkways up and down the building and had parts of its facade clad in porous stone designed to attract moss. “It will inhabit the stone, water can be captured, and that way cooling will be made,” he said.
The Italian architect Stefano Boeri, founder of Stefano Boeri Architetti, is one of the world’s leading biophilic architects. He has created buildings all around the world, from the Netherlands to Albania. His latest project is a 100-apartment building in Milan’s Porta Nuova neighbourhood. Botanica Tower, scheduled to be completed in 2025, will be covered with 18,298 square feet of flowering plants and trees, including bay laurel and pine trees, climbing roses, rosemary, and butterfly bushes. As the seasons change so will the colour of the tower, said Mr. Boeri. He added that the plants aren’t mere decoration; according to his calculations, they will absorb 14 tons of carbon dioxide a year.
Mr. Boeri’s design process starts with choosing a range of plants, based on local climate conditions. He then designs a building around their needs, from soil depth to optimum amounts of sunlight and water. “I sometimes joke a little and say that I design houses for plants and trees that are also used by humans,” he said.
Years of experience in this kind of urban forestry means Mr. Boeri now has plenty of tricks up his sleeve when it comes to maintaining these buildings. He has used ladybugs, released nearby, to destroy pests attacking high-rise trees, and found gardeners with climbing experience to scale buildings to prune trees.
In the U.S., construction of one of the biggest experiments in biophilic development to date begins next year when work starts on One Beverly Hills, a 17.5-acre neighborhood.
By 2027, two apartment buildings containing around 300 homes will be built, each with sliding glass doors leading out onto curved, petal-like terraces filled with plants, according to developer Alagem Capital Group. The project will also have a hotel, shops, restaurants and an 8-acre botanical garden. Reservations for the apartments are already being taken, Alagem said, and the first homes will be listed next year.
“The connection to nature starts when you look out of the window,” said David Summerfield, head of studio at British architectural practice Foster + Partners, which has planned One Beverly Hills. “The residences lower down will look straight out onto the park, and as you go up there are huge terraces. It is almost like the park is coming up the building and into your apartment.”
Reprinted by permission of Mansion Global. Copyright 2021 Dow Jones & Company. Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Original date of publication: September 23, 2021.
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You’ll never guess where they found a little extra room when renovating this west coast house
4 min
There was a time, not too long ago, when the most important must-have for would-be renovators was space. It was all about space to be together and space to be apart.
But as house prices increase across the country, the conversation has started to shift from size for the sake of it towards more flexible, well-designed spaces better suited to contemporary living.
For the owners of this 1920s weatherboard workers’ cottage in Fremantle, the emphasis was less on having an abundance of room and more about creating cohesive environments that could still maintain their own distinct moods. Key to achieving this was manipulating the floorplan in such a way that it could draw in light, giving the impression at least of a larger footprint.
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Positioned on a site that fell three metres from street level, the humble four-room residence had been added to over the years. First order of business for local architect Philip Stejskal was to strip the house back to its original state.
“In this case, they were not quality additions,” Stejskal says. “Sometimes it is important to make sure later additions are not lean-tos.”
The decision to demolish was not taken lightly.
“Sometimes they can be as historically significant as the original building and need to be considered — I wouldn’t want people to demolish our addition in 50 years’ time.”
Northern light hits the site diagonally, so the design solution was to open up the side of the house via a spacious courtyard to maximise opportunities to draw natural light in. However, this had a knock-on effect.
“We had to make space in the middle of the site to get light in,” Stejskal says. “That was one of the first moves, but that created another issue because we would be looking onto the back of the neighbouring building at less appealing things, like their aircon unit.”
To draw attention away from the undesirable view, Stejskal designed a modern-day ‘folly’.
“It’s a chimney and lookout and it was created to give us something nice to look at in the living space and in the kitchen,” Stejskal says.
“With a growing family, the idea was to create a space where people could find a bit of solitude. It does have views to the wider locality but you can also see the port and you can connect to the street as well.”
A garden tap has also been installed to allow for a herb garden at the top of the steps.
“That’s the plan anyway,” he says.
Conjuring up space has been at the core of this project, from the basement-style garaging to the use of the central courtyard to create a pavilion-like addition.
The original cottage now consists of two bedrooms, with a central hallway leading onto a spacious reception and living area. Here, the large kitchen and dining spaces wrap around the courtyard, offering easy access to outdoor spaces via large sliding doors.
Moments of solitude and privacy have been secreted throughout the floorplan, with clever placement of built-in window seats and the crow’s nest lookout on the roof, ideal for morning coffee and sunset drinks.
The house has three bedrooms, including a spacious master suite with walk-in robe and ensuite overlooking the back garden. Adjustable blades on the bedroom windows allow for the control of light, as well as privacy. Although the house was designed pre COVID, it offers the sensibility so many sought through that time — sanctuary, comfort and retreat.
“When the clients came to us, they wanted a house that was flexible enough to cater for the unknown and changes in the family into the future,” Stejskal says. “We gave the owners a series of spaces and a certain variety or moods, regardless of the occasion. We wanted it to be a space that would support that.”
Mood has also been manipulated through the choice of materials. Stejskal has used common materials such as timber and brick, but in unexpected ways to create spaces that are at once sumptuous but also in keeping with the origins of the existing building.
Externally, the brickwork has been finished in beaded pointing, a style of bricklaying that has a softening effect on the varied colours of bricks. For the flooring, crazy paving in the courtyard contrasts with the controlled lines of tiles laid in a stack bond pattern. Close attention has also been paid to the use of veneer on select joinery in the house, championing the beauty of Australian timbers with a lustrous finish.
“The joinery is finished in spotted gum veneer that has been rotary cut,” says Stejskal. “It is peeled off the log like you peel an apple to give you this different grain.”
Even the laundry has been carefully considered.
“The laundry is like a zen space with bare stone,” he says. “We wanted these different moods and the landscape of rooms. We wanted to create a rich tapestry in this house.”
The owners now each experience the house differently, highlighting separate aspects of the building as their favourite parts. It’s quite an achievement when the site is not enormous. Maybe it’s not size that matters so much after all.
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