Biophilia is our deep affinity with all living organisms, because we are part of nature. However, modernism has disconnected this intimate relationship.
Biophilic design seeks to restore our connection to the natural world, improving health and wellness through frequent and fulfilling experiences in nature. This reflects in better places to live, work and play, and increased productivity at work, promoting adaptation and resilience to climate and environmental changes while improving quality of life and health in times of pandemics.
Biophilic urbanism brings nature into the daily functioning of buildings and cities by creating new niches for urban nature, ensuring ecosystem services, biodiversity restoration, quality of life, health and wellbeing. It is about understanding the place we live in, its richness and how it varies through seasons and over time.
Regenerative development contributes to healing and improving place conditions, both in their social and biophysical aspects. The regenerative approach sees the integration of humans and their activities with other forms of life in a harmonious and mutually beneficial manner.
The implementation of regenerative initiatives show that existing degraded precincts can be revitalised, and new ones can be designed as quality-built environments that are able to regenerate social and natural systems leading to the wider regeneration of built environments and communities.
Combining both approaches is an appropriate strategy to make cities and neighbourhoods more liveable.
Placemaking is a design strategy that enables innovation and community participation. It is place based and promotes meaningful narratives about the place, incorporating cultural, social and environmental aspects.
Placemaking is emerging as an effective strategy to build social capital by prompting community values and aspirations, feelings and connection to place, sense of belonging and stewardship of place. Indigenous knowledge is an essential foundation to be incorporated into the process to achieve social and environmentally sustainable interactions.
S. Kellert and E. Calabrese
We acknowledge the value of natural systems in supporting human and non-human life. Thus, we focus our activities on recoupling built and natural environments through design, aiming a harmonic and mutually beneficial relationship between people and nature.
In our practice we implement principles and strategies from three social-ecological approaches to architecture, urban design and green urban infrastructure: Biophilic Design, Regenerative Development and Placemaking.
The current human health, environment and climate global emergency is demonstrating that a paradigm shift is overdue. We need to change the way we relate to the natural world, our current ways of production and consumption, the way we think about, design and construct, buildings and cities to effectively respond to the challenges humanity and the planet are facing.
We aim to contribute to creating places that are conducive to life by improving local health, wellbeing and quality of life of human and non-human communities.
Our methodologies are applicable globally, with the necessary consideration of the uniqueness of each place, and comprehend residential, commercial, health care and educational buildings, and various urban scales such as public spaces, mixed-use and precinct developments.
Our work integrates the following areas:
We provide information, tools and guidance for application of Biophilic design and urbanism, Regenerative design and Placemaking to professionals of the built environment: architects, interior and landscape architects, urban designers and planners, designers and engineers.
We are share the ideas on the areas of Biophilic design and urbanism, Regenerative design and Placemaking that we use in our work offering:
A course on Biophilic Design is comming soon! Register your name and email to receive
Transitioning to a nature-positive society and economy is the ultimate way of living within our planet’s boundaries and contribute solutions to the current challenges we are facing. As design professionals we need to rethink the way we work and start bringing nature into our projects… creating opportunities of regeneration… and promoting behavioral change.
That is possible!
Designing buildings and urban spaces that provide habitats for ecosystems and biodiversity is part of urban regeneration and is a step forward towards a nature-positive world.
We help agencies and institutions at all levels of government to serve constituents by protecting natural resources that strengthen community resilience and improve the quality of life. Whether you represent a municipal, state, tribal, federal, or regional government, we can help you.
We help forward-thinking, private landholders to achieve their goals while enhancing local ecology, conserving resources, and integrating the built and natural environment.
We help advance the missions of community and environmental not-for-profit organizations of all sizes. From grant procurement, to community engagement to project execution, we work side-by-side with those at the forefront of positive change.