SAP Podcast, Ep. 2: Health, Happiness and Biophilia

A connection to nature allows humans to feel safe, healthy, and productive. We design for human experience and take responsibility for making the people who eventually move through our spaces feel those same things. So the topic of biophilia gets a lot of attention at SERA, whether we’re talking about a new building or interior spaces, or planning to transform a downtown or conceiving the outdoor areas of a campus. Our Sustainability Action Plan looks at a lot of aspects of health and wellness, and biophilia is both a particular area of focus and a tool to achieve some of the goals that are nearest and dearest to our hearts.

When we first identified this topic as one we wanted to know more about, we launched a two-year research project and developed some designated experts in-house. We’ve also developed tools for understanding and leveraging this approach across all studios and project types. It all comes down to how human beings naturally connect with the environment and how understanding those principles can suggest innovative design options—and lead to much greater satisfaction for the inhabitants of the space in the long term.

There’s a lot to explore in this topic, and we invite you to download SERA’s Sustainability Action Plan and read the whole section—but, as an intro, our podcast explains the concepts, shows some of the tools and approaches we use, and highlights how that’s impacted some of our recent design work.

Enjoy!