How can biophilic design improve industrial sustainability? (2024)

Biophilic design employs living strategies found in nature to solve environmental and social challenges. Translating biological strategies involves three essential elements—emulation, habitation, and interconnection. Emulation means to learn from and replicate natural forms, mechanisms, and ecosystems to make regenerative buildings and manufactured products. Habitation makes all environments conducive to life by knowing how living things and humanity thrive together. Interconnection is the inclusion of nature to all things in the built environment. Biophilic design provides empathetic, interconnected practices learned by mimicking designs found in nature applied to the creation of all contexts, processes and industries at any scale.

🌿 Embracing biophilic design in industrial spaces leads to a greener and more sustainable future! By integrating natural elements like daylight, greenery, and eco-friendly materials, we enhance energy efficiency, reduce environmental impact, and boost employee well-being. From biodiversity support to waste reduction, the positive impacts are endless. Let's build a future where industry and nature coexist harmoniously for the benefit of our planet and people! 🌍💚 #BiophilicDesign #Sustainability #IndustrialInnovation #MPSARCHONIC

In my view, Biophilic design is pivotal for a Bio-Ethical based Industrial Revolution. Historic industrial progress relied on the machine paradigm, but today's industry 4.0 demands a merger of digital advancements with ecological thinking among visionaries and designers. This new Eco-technology paradigm aims to integrate nature's rhythms into circular industrial processes and holistic water management through research and innovative design methods, signifying a transformative approach in manufacturing and industrial production.

Biophilic design is pivotal for reducing the carbon footprint of industrial buildings and achieving net-zero emissions. By integrating natural elements like greenery and maximizing natural light, biophilic designs minimize the need for artificial lighting and HVAC systems, thus reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions. Incorporating sustainable materials and construction methods further decreases embodied carbon. These innovative approaches contribute to achieving net-zero emissions by balancing any remaining carbon emissions with removal or offsetting strategies. Overall, biophilic design enhances the sustainability and resilience of industrial buildings while mitigating climate change.

Some of the challenges include:1. Limited space and light: Integrating natural elements such as plants, water features, and natural lighting can be difficult in such settings.2. Noise and air: Industrial facilities can make it challenging to create a serene and healthy environment that promotes biophilic design.3. Maintenance: This can be a challenge in an industrial environment, where resources and time may be limited.Despite these challenges, incorporating biophilic design elements in industrial facilities can significantly improve employee well-being, productivity, and overall satisfaction. Addressing these challenges and finding innovative solutions can lead to a more sustainable, healthy, and enjoyable work environment.

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1.Balancing Function with Nature: Industrial spaces prioritize function. Biophilic design needs to seamlessly integrate greenery & natural light, without compromising core operations, safety protocols, or creating maintenance burdens. THINK: living walls that improve air quality and act as sound buffers in noisy environments.2.Adapting to Diverse Environments: Biophilic design needs to flexibly accommodate factors like extreme hot or cold temperatures, hazardous materials, or limited access to water. THINK: Drought-tolerant plants & recycled water irrigation systems.3.Measuring ROI: Quantifying the benefits is crucial. THINK: Clear pre- and post- implementation metrics on employee absenteeism, reduced stress, and productivity gains.

Natural textures, flowing water features, and fractal patterns are examples of nature-inspired design components that can induce happy emotions and lessen stress in employees.

Most critical is to incorporate biophilic design using renewable energy for carbon-free manufacturing. Solar and wind energy can now generate sufficient power or heat for steel production, water desalination, enhanced oil recovery, and chemical/plastic production through concentrated solar-thermal power technologies. For example, EVRAZ in Pueblo, Colorado, uses a solar powered Electric Arc Furnace featuring 7.3 square kilometers of 750,000 solar panels to provide 90% of its electricity demand. Nucor’s $250 million micro mill in Sedalia, Missouri, is the first U.S. steel plant designed to run on wind energy, while Swiss company Panatère is melting steel with the world’s 1st industrial solar furnace without fuel or electricity.

Incorporating biophilic design into industrial projects begins with assessing the site and context to identify natural features. Define project goals aligned with biophilic principles, then explore design options creating connections with nature. Evaluate feasibility and impact, collecting feedback and data for ongoing improvement. Biophilic design not only enhances sustainability but also makes industrial spaces more attractive, enjoyable, and inspiring, benefiting the environment, society, economy, and project teams alike.

The most exciting way in which biophilic design can offer solutions in the future is through studying, understanding, and adapting biophilic processes -- how life actually functions -- rather than focusing on the simplistic biomimicry of natural forms.

For the past 100 years, the profession has mostly celebrated architecture with industrial and technological forms and features. Most of this work purposefully attempts to separate humankind from the natural aesthetic to establish the domination of the machine aesthetic. Evidence of the antithetical opposition to nature within architecture abounds in expressionism, modernism, brutalism, minimalism, postmodernism, and deconstructivism. Unfortunately, this mastery over nature has done little to provide a nurturing world for its residents, while the stress-induced byproduct of this architecture has yielded nothing but barren self-regard for aesthetic abstraction and catastrophic debts to nature. It is time to build with nature rather oppose it.

In my opinion, sustainable and biophilic design should be par for course and we should all embrace this to save our planet and humanity. We need to move beyond planting trees/ greens on buildings, making organic shapes and what I consider green washing. We need to reduce consumption of concrete, materials sourced from beyond 500kms and explore more local and crafted techniques. Modularity has value but source, provenance of material and embedded energy should be factored in when we design. It’s hard but doable. Back to biophilic- if we learn from nature and observe what forms work best in what environments and also go a step beyond to do bio-mimetic architecture and design. Am confident we can make it human, aesthetic & sustainable.