The point where architecture and psychology meets: What is biophilic architecture?

If we want to understand biophilic architecture, first we need to understand what is an architecture. Throughout the history, humans had built open and closed spaces to continue their living, sometimes did not give attention to how much could this spaces change their living quaility. Although some people think architecture is just about constructing some buildings, which is not true, various architects defined architecture in several ways.

Jean Nouvel in Newsweek describes architecture as perification of a cultural moment.

Diébédo Francis Kéré in Washington Post significate architecture as improving people’s life quality, it is not only about building.

Nicolai Ouroussoff in Los Angeles Times explains architecture as an physical experience which need to be entirely understood by seeing and touching.

Ada Louise Huxtable in New York Times describes that architecture is an international exhibition laboratory where you can create an environment, create forms and solve problems.

Renzo Piano in Time defines  architecture as a dangerous job. He says that  if a writer makes a bad book, people don't read it. But you will enforce ugliness on a place for a hundred years, if you make bad architecture.

These definitions all related to biophilia, nature is the main culture of human beings since the beginning of their first kind. Biophilia is first found by Edward O. Wilson suggesting that it is an motivation for humans to connect with other life. Recently, biophilia hypothesis are more related to architecture and interior living. Because people spend a huge percentage of their time indoors a day, biophilic design has a purpose of improving well-being, performance by improving physiological and psychological health. Reseraches show that mimicking natural systems and incorporating nature indoors, decrease stress levels, increase creativity and accelerates illness recovery. Also, biophilia is not just about plants placed indoors.It can be about taking in more natural light, moving or motionless water, hearing natural sounds like the sound of water, or the sound of the animals. Touching and seeing gravel, stone and soil. Unlike these open environment natural elements, cave texture used indoors oddly attractive for human beings. Reseraches show that cave is a context for our first anchestors, which provides shelter to avoid predators and weather conditions. This gives us a feeling of protection which is inherited by our anchestors.