Photo Courtesy Kenneth Cobonpue
Bloom Easy Armchair
Bloom Easy Armchair by Kenneth Cobonpue, to the trade from Fuse.
It’s not your imagination: You probably do feel physically and mentally better while walking in the woods or hanging Up North at the cabin for a weekend. Design experts recommend bringing that feeling home with you through a practice called biophilic design.
“Biophilia is the innate connection humans have with other living systems,” explains Richard Graves, director of the U of M’s Center for Sustainable Building Research, which hosted an interactive exhibit on biophilic design last year. “It gives us health and well-being benefits.”
Adding indoor plants to homes, offices, or other spaces is an obvious first step—“There are studies that show being in the presence of plants lowers people’s heart rates, and it improves air quality,” Graves says—but biophilic design involves more than watering a living room monstera.
Christine Frisk, principal and founder of InUnison Design, often infuses it into residential and commercial spaces she designs via organic textures like stonework, natural patina, and wood; moving-water fixtures like fountains; natural-looking paint colors or art depicting nature; and even furniture and light fixtures that evoke natural elements (like the chair above, sourced from IMS’s Fuse showroom).
“When we express nature in interiors and architecture, it’s best experienced when it’s complex,” she says. “It’s not just three plants in a corner—although that’s better than nothing!”
