With everyone’s’ busy schedules and routine days, it is very easy to become restless, bored and eager to give ourselves a mental break. Especially in facilities such as office buildings and schools, a typical user would spend a good majority of their time indoors undertaking multiple tasks.
“Our beds are empty two-thirds of the time. Our living rooms are empty seven-eighths of the time. Our office buildings are empty half of the time”
–Buckminster Fuller
People usually spend at least eight hours in a built environment, in a detached and dispassionate environment. Many built environments tend to ignore the inbuilt human need for sensory variety. Considering the fact that the average human spends a majority of their time in their workplace, shouldn’t it be critical to design a space that harmonizes with the occupants, an affectionate space that sympathizes with the occupants? The concept of a biophilic environment exhibits the instinctive bond between human beings and living systems. Bringing natural elements indoors helps improve indoor air quality, evoke positive responses in people, and also offers sensory variation.
This study is intended to study the relationship of indoor biophilic environments and the beneficial social impacts on occupants within facilities. Through multiple series of interventions of placing indoor plants in designated area, the frequency of occupants that decide to utilize the space will be observed. The interventions would increase as weeks go by to help calibrate the amount of greenery the occupants would prefer. The interventions will be generated as passively as possible to remain unintrusive to the results. If the outcomes are deemed effective to the occupants, then interventions will be implemented within studios/office spaces as well. Surveys will be conducted to note the effects of botany in the spaces. (What kind of effects though?)
The results of these experiments will ideally help designers appreciate the benefits of a biophilic environments and a sensory conscious space. (What else?) Prodigy, social understanding of botany/biophilia, sense of community, increased appreciation, satisfaction?