Is Architecture Catching Up With What Landscapers Knew All Along?

Biophilic design is changing the way architects think about the relationship between homes and nature. For landscapers, much of that thinking may sound surprisingly familiar – and that creates an opportunity

Landscapers have been helping architects and homeowners realise their visions for indoor-outdoor flow for years. Biophilic design takes that familiar idea further.

It’s an architectural approach that integrates nature into the built environment to support human health and wellbeing. Rather than simply providing access to an outdoor area, it aims to create an ongoing relationship between people and the surrounding climate, topography and ecosystem.

Architect and biophilic design expert Lisa Day, of Day Architects, puts it more simply.

“Biophilic design is an active engagement that encourages connection of people and place,” Lisa says.

“It uses thoughtful spatial flow and custom openings that invite the sights, sounds, touch and scents of nature right into your daily routine.”

More Than a View

Picture a home sitting above an exceptional landscape. The conventional response might be to turn the living area towards it, install an expansive wall of glass and let the view do the talking. It can be spectacular – but Lisa says there’s a difference between looking at nature and experiencing it.

“We step back and look at how the topography works, how the land, the climate, the natural foliage and the natural materials of the land work. Then we try and design to work with all of it.”

That philosophy will be familiar to many landscapers – and it changes the questions being asked.

Where does the first morning sun land? What can you hear through an open window? Where will the prevailing wind make a deck uncomfortable? Could a wall, screen or planting create a sheltered pocket?

They’re architectural questions – but they’re also landscaping questions. And that overlap is where an opportunity starts to emerge.

Embrace the Elements

Buildings naturally protect us from rain, wind, cold and heat. Biophilic design asks whether we can experience those elements without always having to shut them out.

“A genuine connection to nature embraces change, weather, the passage of time, rather than trying to seal the world away,” Lisa says.

Inside, natural materials mirror that philosophy and provide another connection.

Timber shouldn’t just look like timber. You should be able to feel and smell it too. Sunlight moves across those surfaces. Shadows change. Materials age.

“You notice subtle shifts throughout the day,” Lisa says. “You’re in the moment.”

Again, these are qualities landscape professionals work with every day. Plants grow and change. Materials weather. Water moves. Sun and shade shift with the seasons.

Successful landscapes don’t remain frozen at the point of completion – they live. Biophilic architecture brings that same thinking into the home.

On one Waiheke project, that thinking extended to pathways and steps through the landscape, which used locally sourced gravel, pebbles and stone to reflect the character of the island.

“It’s part of that whole principle that you’re staying in touch with the land.”

When Does the Landscape Begin?

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of biophilic design for landscapers is the way it challenges the traditional boundary between architecture and landscaping.

Day Architects considers outdoor areas from the initial scheme design, creating spaces and sightlines that connect the home with the wider site.

Lisa describes it as a tapestry, with the architecture inside and outside woven together.

“There’s no clear boundary,” she says. “We cross over what might be deemed inside and outside. To us, they should be one.”

Day Architects will often establish outdoor spaces and sightlines during the initial design before landscape specialists develop the planting and other details that make those connections tangible.

“It’s a collaborative effort. Usually it’s between contractors, soft landscapers, and also the landscape designers or architects,” Lisa says.

For landscapers, it potentially shifts the conversation. Instead of arriving once the architecture has established the boundaries of the project, there’s an opportunity for landscape expertise to help determine where those boundaries should be in the first place.

Skills Landscapers Already Have

That opportunity doesn’t necessarily require an entirely new skillset. Many of the practical ingredients of biophilic design are already fundamental to good landscaping.

The difference is in how those individual decisions connect to the experience of the home as a whole. For landscapers, that could mean thinking beyond what happens outdoors and considering what someone experiences from inside too.

What do they see from the kitchen window? What can they smell when a door is open? Where does sunlight fall in winter? What planting moves in the wind outside a bedroom? Could birds be encouraged closer to the areas the family uses every day?

In other words, landscaping becomes part of the architecture rather than something surrounding it.

It Doesn’t Need to Be Grand

Lisa is keen to dispel the idea that biophilic design needs to be complicated or expensive.

“It’s not necessarily about having a super expensive grass roof,” she says.

Her own home provided an example on a small section and modest budget. The garden was treated as part of the interior, helping a relatively small home feel larger. Planting fed birds and bees as well as the family, with vegetables and herbs close enough to the house to become part of everyday routines.

“You step out of your kitchen and you pick your herbs and you bring it in,” Lisa says. “It brings that whole wellbeing idea full circle because you’re also introducing taste and you’re introducing smell.”

That simplicity matters. Biophilic design can involve living walls, green roofs and sophisticated architectural systems. But its underlying principle can be much more straightforward – pay attention to the site, create opportunities for people to engage with it, then think about how those experiences can extend towards – and into – the home.