Lamin Art Whitepaper042913

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Biophilia:Designing with Nature in Mind


Healthcare Interior Design is Shifting Toward a More Natural Solution

A Surge of Intelligent Healthcare Designs

Now more than ever, the designed environment in healthcare is proving its increasingly vital role in the health and wellness industry. New research shows just how important investing in the designed space can be when it comes to promoting psychological wellbeing and economic responsibility. Furthermore, recent shifts in the design industry point to one specific emerging trend: the movement toward introducing biophilia, or elements dealing with human’s basic interaction and love of nature, into healthcare design as a way to improve patient and employee wellness.

The movement toward biophilia is in stark contrast with how healthcare design has been approached in the past. Throughout history, healthcare design has tried to bridge the needs of patients and doctors, but a fair balance isn’t always attainable. Although one of the primary goals of healthcare facilities is to create a sense of soothing comfort for their patients, traditional healthcare design elements are often lacking. For example, choosing white as the predominant color palette in hospitals was meant to promote sanitation and a feeling of sterilization, so hospitals tended to be white or pale green, and were treated as an extension of other government facilities.

Fortunately, the last 20 years have witnessed a surge of designers recognizing the potential of intelligent healthcare interior design. There has been a push to inform design with research-based, and results-oriented evidence, a practice called Evidence-Based Design. That means relying on research, rather than tradition, to determine what colors promote the feeling of comfort and wellness in a patient. According to Jain Malkin Inc., advantageous colors tend to be natural hues including beiges and other neutral colors with accents of warm woods, ochers, blues and greens.

Today, healthcare facilities strive to create a more needs-specific environment, and design plays a crucial role. Traditional interiors are


Making the Case for Biophillic DesignThis white paper makes a case for introducing biophila into healthcare design as a way to create a needs-specific environment, reduce annual costs, and improve both employee and patient welfare. Healthcare environments that incorporate biophilia have been shown to have positive effects on the people entering into them, like a more productive staff and patients who heal quicker. Biophillic design is a simple way to incorporate nature into an otherwise cold, inflexible environment.

Lamin-Art Inc., the North American design leader in architectural surfaces, such as laminate, real wood veneer and metallic surfaces, has been a continual resource to the healthcare design community. Lamin-Art’s architectural surfaces are made of authentic fibers, jute textiles and both real and printed wood designs, so they’re a simple way to incorporate natural elements and promote good health and quality welfare.

changing into more functional, positive spaces, and in doing so have reaped benefits, such as patient satisfaction and an increase in employee efficiency. More specifically, hospitals are borrowing from the “home away from home” aesthetic in order to reduce environmental stressors and promote patient comfort levels. Psychologically, healthcare design affects employee work habits and can even influence recovery period for patients by up to 8.5 percent. Financially, problems resulting from poor healthcare design can add up. Today, productivity costs are 112 times greater than energy costs in the workplace.


Healthcare Design & Healthcare Personnel

Let’s start with a shocking statistic. According to a 2010 study published by the United States Department of Labor, the cost per square foot of a given corporate office space is overwhelmingly devoted to salary; in fact, 90.3 percent of costs per square foot are channeled toward salary alone, while only 8.9 percent is paid toward rent and mortgage, and 0.8% toward energy costs.

Investing in employee workspace is thus heavily underrated; while it may not seem like an obvious choice for money allocation compared to more discernible objects, such as new technology or equipment, the returns of investment in a workspace are drastic—and quantifiable.

On the employee side, staff problems that can be attributed to poor interior design include staff illness, absenteeism, retention, and overall job performance. With good, biophilic interior design these issues are minimized by 10 percent.

Happy Employees Show Up to WorkIn 2010, the U.S. Department of Labor reported an annual absenteeism rate of 3 percent per employee in the private sector, or 62.4 hours per year per employee lost. On average, this equates to a financial loss of $2,074 per employee per year. Across twenty employees, the same company will lose over $41,000 in salary costs. The number is even more dramatic in the public sector. The reported average absentee rate for the public sector is 4 percent — over 83 hours — so an employee’s average absences cost $2,502 per year. In a large organization, this translates to millions of dollars lost to absences alone.

Of course, an employee can show up to work but mentally be elsewhere. The phenomenon of “presenteeism” is attributed to sleepiness, headaches and illness. Presenteeism costs employers in the private sector $938, and employers in the public sector $1,250, per employee per year. For a company with 100 employees, this equates to over $100,000 lost per year in unproductive time at work and can thus be just as dangerous as employee absenteeism.

Therefore, poor healthcare design affects medical employees in an extremely negative manner, and these effects are not only quantifiable, but extremely expensive.


Healthcare Design and Patients

Bland and claustrophobic healthcare design has been shown to negatively affect patients, as well. Research demonstrates that poor interior design in healthcare facilities inhibit recovery rates, increase anxiety and stress, and magnify the rate at which medication is delivered. It is vital to keep patients’ psychological welfare in mind. In the $2.5 trillion healthcare industry, simply changing patients’ views from their hospital beds could yield over $93 million in annual savings nationwide. Patients have shown that they recover quicker in rooms with natural views than in ones with an urban view; as a result, patients require less time in the hospital to recover from major surgery, and hospitals save money.

In 1984, Roger Ulrich, professor of architecture at the Center for Healthcare Building Research at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, set out to explore the influence of natural sceneries versus urban sceneries on patients recovering from gallbladder surgery. Ulrich found that, on average, patients whose windows overlooked natural sceneries were released after 7.96 days, compared to the 8.71 days it took for patients who looked at brick walls. In terms of financial cost, patient care expenditures could have been reduced by over $161,000 if patients were released just one day sooner. With the right tools, healthcare facilities can implement an interior design strategy that encourages patients to recover in a swift manner, and can save thousands of dollars in the process.


Biophilia Bridges the Needs of Both Patient and Provider — Naturally

Biophilia is the innate human attraction to nature. The term stems from the Greek roots meaning “love of life” and was coined by social psychologist Erich Fromm. In the 1980s, American biologist Edward O. Wilson propagated the term when he pioneered a new school of thought focused on the need to bring humans back in contact with nature. “Life around us exceeds in complexity and beauty anything else humanity is ever likely to encounter,” Wilson said.

Biophilia as a school of thought holds that human beings have a biological need for connection with nature, and can thus be physically, mentally and socially affected by nature. More specifically, research has shown that biophilic additions to an interior space have an overwhelmingly positive effect on the people inhabiting the space.

One striking example illustrating this effect is a 2011 study conducted at the University of Oregon. The study revealed that 10 percent of employee absences could be attributed to architectural elements that did not connect with nature, and that a person’s view was the primary predictor of absenteeism (Elzeyadi). When asked to rate scenes according to their preference, the building’s occupants heavily favored the vegetated views over the urban views, and either view over none at all. Furthermore, employees with natural landscape views took an average of 57 hours of sick leave per year compared to the 68 hours taken by employees with no view at all. Employees with an urban view ranked between the other two groups. Overall, the employees’ views and environments explained 10 percent of the variation in sick leave days taken.

In another study conducted in 2008, subjects were shown to react more positively to environments with stimuli that included fractal patterns commonly found in nature. When subjects were shown images of fractal patterns in nature or townscapes of the built environment, they were more relaxed when exposed to natural landscapes. Furthermore, other physiological effects dealing with nature have been well-documented for years. For instance, subjects made to walk through forest atmospheres had average lower stress hormone concentrations and less stress levels than subjects made to walk in urban areas. On a deeper physiological level, overall parasympathetic activity, which represents relaxation levels, increased by 56.1 percent, whereas sympathetic activity, which represents stress levels, decreased by 19.4 percent (Park, 2010).

Biophilic elements added on a much smaller-scale also have positive effects. As hospitals tend to be stressful environments for patients, adding biophilic elements like increased daylight, water, plants, trees, and non-threatening animals reduces patient and staff anxiety.

In a study conducted at a Swedish university hospital in 1990, scenes of nature in artwork and murals were shown to reduce anxiety and discomfort in patients staying at the hospital. The patients who were recovering from open heart surgery experienced the least post-operative anxiety when looking at pictures of natural scenes that included water, compared with pictures of abstract art, a control picture, or no picture at all (Ulrich & Lunden).

Natural Elements Trigger Relaxation and Positivity


Designing with Biophilia in Mind

According to a report published by Terrapin Bright Green LLC, there are three considerations when designers begin creating an interior with biophilia in mind: nature in the space, natural analogues and the nature of the space.

Natural Analogues are another powerful way to incorporate biophilia into a designed space without bringing in live elements. This includes representational artwork, ornamentation, biomorphic forms, and the use of natural materials. Examples are pictures of trees and water, building elements that mimic shells and leaves, furniture made of organic materials, and visible wood grain.

Nature in the space refers to the incorporation of plants, water and animals into the setting. Examples include potted plants, water features, aquariums, and courtyard gardens, as well as views to nature from the inside of a building. These direct connections to nature produce the strongest biophilic reactions

The nature of the space is a less conspicuous way to incorporate biophilic elements into a designed space. This type of design refers to different spatial configurations, with human beings’ innate preference being open savanna-like spaces. In other words, open, horizontal planes are preferred whenever possible.

Nature of the Space

Natural Analogues

Nature in the Space


Lamin-Art: A Biophilic Solution

In healthcare, sanitation is everything, so porous surfaces and materials like woods can become problematic for patients with lowered immune systems. Moreover, durability and high-ware elements are a necessity for healthcare design. With today’s modern manufacturing technologies, designers don’t have to sacrifice wood surfaces for cold, white materials.

Design leaders in laminates and real wood veneers like Lamin-Art, have become invaluable resources for healthcare interior designers. Lamin-Art, for example, has supplied the healthcare interior design

industry with an exceptional selection of innovative architectural, including four biophilic collections. Two of the collections, Veneer-Art and Premium Wood Prints, showcase wood as the primary biophilic element. The other two collections, Abacá and Burlap, highlight real, organic fibers found in nature.

Real wood veneers made from real—not reconstituted—wood evokes the feeling of nature because it is nature. These real woods will help patients and employees reap the full benefits of a biophilic interior as they include the natural inconsistencies of real wood, like knots, mineral lines, and worm tracks. And because it’s a veneer, products like Veneer-Art combine the natural beauty of real, hand-selected wood with the superior durability of laminates. Designers can also tie in the analogues of elements like moss, burlap and muslin by using durable architectural surfaces to compliment wood elements.

Whether designers are creating an entirely new design, adding a few elements to an existing design, or rotating a bed for outdoor views, the more nature is incorporated into a space, the more benefits patients and staff will feel. To learn more about incorporating biophilic elements into interior design, please contact your local Architectural Representative to schedule a CEU presentation.

Real Nature, Real Results.


About Lamin-Art, Inc.

Lamin-Art, Inc. is the design leader in laminate, real wood veneer and metallic surfaces in North America. Lamin-Art partners with interior designers, architects and fabricators to facilitate their visions by providing innovative products that add value and elegance to interior spaces. With outstanding customer service and a philosophy of anticipating trends to develop and market innovative servicing materials, Lamin-Art supplies design-enhancing, durable surfacing products used on applications in office, hospitality, retail, healthcare, education and more. Go to www.laminart.com for additional information.

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Lamin Art Whitepaper042913