Bringing nature indoors is more than aesthetics.
It is, in fact, a discipline called biomimicry that may provide health benefits to homeowners as well as innovative designs for a variety of societal needs.
Decidedly green, the concept represents a marked departure from industrial efforts that have depleted the environment and those who inhabit it, say biomimicry devotees.
Roses by the bed, pebbles underfoot, driftwood collected on a walk along a quiet beach. When placed inside, these items plucked from nature represent a form of biomimicry, a practice that aims to replicate the design of nature for everyday use. A kindred word, biophilia, refers to a person’s innate appreciation and attraction to nature.
On blueprints, these concepts materialize in high ceilings and walls of windows to shepherd in natural light. On the ground floor, the use of trees as sculpture and functional material as well as earthy wall tones and leaf-inspired fabrics implement biomimicry in its simplest form.
“Anyone who is inspired by nature is using biomimicry in a sense,” says Clodagh, an international designer in New York who uses only the one name, and who lectured on the subject at the recent Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability Conference in Boulder.
Outside the home, these concepts also have proven successful. A train engineer in India, for instance, noticed that kingfisher birds fly into water at top speed without creating a loud splash. He redesigned a high-speed train with a beak- like front end to reduce noise, and it worked.
Using that same logic, biomimicry devotees seek to emulate the peaceful experience of nature indoors. Once they discern what natural elements invoke a sense of well being, they try to mimic them. If a lush park imparts a sense of peace, why wouldn’t those colors, coupled with a collection of leafy plants, work the same magic at home?
Lorell Frysh is a transpersonal psychologist and interior designer in Boulder who has worked with clients around the world. Plants not only provide grounding energy, she claims: They absorb or reflect negative energy.
“The exchange of molecules and atoms has a direct effect on our biochemistry (and) that has a direct effect on our physical state,” Frysh says.
A book titled “Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature,” by Janine Benyus (Harper Collins/2007), is credited for jump-starting formal discussions about this concept — although Clodagh and other biomimicry designers say clients have always sought greater connections to nature.
They just didn’t know what to call it.
“People have done this innately without putting words to it,” adds Frysh, who believes that biomimicry is a way to harness the healing power of nature.
“Biomimicry and biophilia speak to a part of us that wants to be with the gentle movement of the world,” she says. In one home, she manifests that sense of movement with a manmade river flowing between the floorboards. In other homes, it may take the shape of natural wood adorning door jambs.
For a client in Boulder who copes with chronic illness, Frysh installed a two-story fountain with hand-selected rocks and crystals to provide grounding, healing energy.
“The intention is to use the healing power of nature,” she says. “We may not be aware that’s what we’re doing, but that’s why we feel better in the space.”
In Aspen, another homeowner whose property is surrounded by aspen groves and pine trees told sustainability consultant Annette Stelmack that she wanted her home to reflect the nature of Colorado.
To accommodate the request, Stelmack, who is based in Denver, used wood floors and designed several back splash areas with a handcrafted leaf and tree-trunk mosaic. The colors are a mixture of gold, green and rich browns.
“It’s a restful, peaceful place because it reflects the outdoors,” Stelmack says. “There’s a serenity to following the heart of a place and where you are in the land.”
As director of the Institute for Sustainable Studies at the Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design in Denver, Julie Stewart-Pollack teaches students the multi-dimensional aspects of biomimicry.
“It is far more involved than just bringing nature or natural elements inside,” she says. In addition to understanding the benefits of nature, students need to consider which components of the natural environment provide those benefits before they can implement those qualities in interiors.
“It (is) clear to me that both biophilia and biomimicry were addressing the human need to not only experience nature, but to learn from nature as a model for design,” she says. It’s “something we have done for thousands of years, but lost our ability to do during the last few generations.”
As the quest for green and sustainable interiors expands and develops, a growing number of designers recognize biomimicry and biophilia as logical extensions to healing design. “Environments that integrate biophilic attributes can (provide) the respite needed to overcome stress, mental fatigue, even illness,” Stewart- Pollack says.
Clodagh agrees.
“Your home is like an inner garden,” says the designer, whose book on the subject, “Your Home, Your Sanctuary” (Rizzoli), is out this fall. “That doesn’t necessarily mean leaves and flowers, but small references that tickle nostalgia,” she adds.
From adding energy to a room by installing mirrors or using colors and shapes to reflect a nearby park, Clodagh integrates biomimicry into all of her designs.
Local designers say most clients do not use, or even know, the words biomimicry or biophilia. But people do frequently request a connection between inside and out.
The words are just now floating into our vocabulary, Clodagh says. “That’s the thing about language — it adapts itself around what we’re doing.”
