A new free e-book by the famous urbanist Nikos A. Salingaros. From the introduction:
Our biology should dictate the design of the physical settings we inhabit. As human beings, we need to connect with living structures in our environment. Designers thus face the task of better incorporating healing strategies into their work, using factors that contribute to the biophilic effect. 17th, 18th, 19th, and some 20th century architecture show the healing traits of biophilia. After that, architects ignored complex human responses to the built environment in their enthusiasm for the supposed mechanical efficiencies of the industrial approach to placemaking. Design that uses biophilia considers the inclusive, “bottom-up” processes needed to sustain our health. When ornament is coherent with the rest of a structure, it helps connect people to their environment, and creates a positive, healing atmosphere. Biophilia shows how our evolutionary heritage makes us experience buildings viscerally, and not as intellectualized abstractions. This thinking juxtaposes the focus on innovative form for its own sake with biophilic design.
Download: – Biophilia & Healing Environments: Healthy Principles For Designing the Built World.
A hard copy of the book can be bought from Levellers Press here.
Biophilia and Healing Environments, a 10-part series in Metropolis. Available together as a booklet both on paper, and online, published by Terrapin Bright Green LLC, New York.
These essays as they were first published in Metropolis:
- Why we should be living in “living” houses, 6 August 2015.
- What do light, color, gravity, and fractals have to do with our well-being? 10 August 2015.
- What kind of design triggers healing? 13 August 2015.
- Modern architecture tells an incomplete story, 21 August 2015.
- What do historic buildings say about our connection to the natural world? 28 August 2015.
- The growing demand for spaces that consider our health, 1 September 2015.
- Why do we create ornament to mimic nature? 8 September 2015.
- Modernist minimalism and our relationship with our buildings, 14 September 2015.
- The importance of listening to lessons from nature, 17 September 2015.
- Why we hug the edge of open spaces, 29 September 2015.
- Shortened version of Biophilia and Healing Environments, Buildotech, 13 February 2016.
- Review by Randy Nishimura, S. W. Oregon Architect, 21 February 2016.
– 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design: https://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/reports/14-patterns/
– Design Patterns and Architectural Space, a 55-page booklet containing the Metropolis essays on design patterns: http://zeta.math.utsa.edu/~yxk833/DesignPatterns%26ArchitecturalSpace.pdf