Nature Is Not a Design Element

I grew up in the Alps and still live there. I am a nature person and need the mountains outside my window and the forest behind the house. Because of work I often spend a few consecutive days in a city. I enjoy the first day very much. I watch the people in the cafés, I wonder whether the tree-lined streets already count as enough nature and keep watching what people do and how they interact. I often miss that in the countryside. In the city people are everywhere and you want to see the stories behind them.

On the second day I usually start missing nature. Less the obvious longing, more a physical feeling. I get restless, look for open space, want to get out of the tightness. That has always been the case. But the more conscious I become of it, the more clearly I understand this need, which is not mine alone.

There is even a name for it: biophilia. Edward O. Wilson coined it in 1984. It describes the human tendency to be drawn to living systems and he considered it innate. Research has confirmed him on many points, not on all.

What drives me

Together with others who are deeply engaged with this topic, I co-founded the photography exhibition series Concrete Human. We want to show the drastic influence the built environment can have on people. And in the course of that I read Ann Sussman’s book (Cognitive Architecture: Designing for How We Respond to the Built Environment, Sussman & Hollander, 2015), looked at studies and read a bit deeper. Not because science attracts me, but because I wanted to better understand why my feelings in the city, in the countryside, in rooms or in nature are the way they are.

When observing people in nature and in urban contexts I notice that the moods differ strongly from each other. They are tied to the moment, very individual across the sub-contexts of work, communication, conflict and so on. The range of moods from calm and relaxed to stressed and exhausted is infinitely varied. One group laughs, the man on the sidewalk stares at his phone, everyone close together. Everyone comes from somewhere else and has to be somewhere else. So what am I actually seeing?

First I wanted to know whether there is science behind what I see. It took a long time to find what I was looking for and my answer was: partly. I read a lot about heart rate, blood pressure, cortisol, skin conductance. I read about working memory and attention. And I actually changed my behavior in many ways, because the findings were partly alarming for me as someone over 50. But I also saw gaps: how can the mood of a specific person with a specific history in a specific moment in a specific room and context be fully captured. Where do the feelings have their place. The parts that are measured and the parts that are not become ever more clearly recognizable. I am not a scientist and I lack the terminology to express this professionally, but quite a lot becomes visible. Even the invisible takes shape. By seeing that it is not so easily measurable. But I have written other essays that explore my perspective on this more deeply.

What happens to the body

Roger Ulrich ran an experiment in 1991 (Ulrich et al., 1991, Psychophysiology). 120 subjects watched a stress-inducing film and then either a nature video or a city video. What was measured was not what people said but what happened in their bodies. The significant factors were heart rate, muscle tension, skin conductance. Stress recovery was faster and more complete with nature. Heart rate slowed in the first four to seven minutes to its lowest level since the stress film. With the city videos it accelerated. I felt confirmed. I will probably never move to a city.

Hartig followed up in the field in 2003 (Hartig et al., 2003, Environment and Behavior). With 112 subjects walking for 50 minutes. One group through a nature reserve, the other through a city. The nature walk lowered systolic blood pressure by about 6 mmHg compared to the city walk. That corresponds to the effect of mild blood pressure medication. Those who afterwards sat in a room with a view of trees saw their blood pressure continue to drop. Those in a windowless room did not.

It is more than mood

Berman showed in 2009 that nature does not just calm you down but makes the brain perform better (Berman et al., 2008, Psychological Science). This time 38 students took a 50-minute walk. Before and after they took a working memory test. The nature walk improved the result by one and a half units, the city walk by half a unit. Nature is three times as strong. And the effect was independent of mood, season and weather. The brain works better after a nature walk regardless of whether you felt good during it.

In another experiment pictures of nature were already enough. No real nature was needed, just the visual information. Again I felt confirmed. My view from the window is enough, even when I sit inside and work. So the brain responds to the pattern, not just the place.

The universal finding

Koivisto published one of the most important recent studies in 2022 (Koivisto et al., 2022). He analyzed 316 people with the question of whether the positive response to nature was innate or learned. The finding was one of the largest in all of environmental psychology. At least as far as I could tell. Nature images triggered vastly more positive emotions than city images. And it also became clear that childhood experience with nature, personality, age, gender and so on had no influence. But: tolerance of cities can be learned. That means people who grew up in nature find cities more unpleasant. They do not get used to them, they become more sensitive. That matches what I experience.

I found all of this remarkable because it matches what I observe, but it did not quite fit either. Because the study measures emotions and I try to recognize states of consciousness. A person meditating in a park is in a different state than someone jogging in the same park. Both are in nature. What this natural space ultimately does to them depends on what they bring.

Measurement has limits from my perspective

Already in my early twenties I had started working with meditation. Over the years I have learned to change my state of consciousness drastically within minutes. And there are studies that can measure this too. Through brain scans for example. But context gets lost in the process. Research measures the variables and yet life does not consist only of those, but of far more complex states.

I can neither qualitatively evaluate the studies nor would I doubt them. The physiological effects are there and the data can certainly be considered clean. However I doubt that measurement results alone can explain what a space actually does to a person. People bring their entire history, their mood, their consciousness in that moment. Two people in the same room then logically experience something completely different.

Since I have been working intensively on ontology for some time, it was clear to me that you just need to add enough thought and AI to tease out the differences in a nuanced way. Not inventing new metrics but bringing existing ones into new relationships with each other. Between science and architecture with all its measured values and unmeasured moods. Between what a space does and what a person brings.

An important experience for me was: photography helps with that. Because a photograph shows the space and the person in it at the same time and makes visible that gap which science does not capture and leaves unanswered.

It is the dose

White studied nearly 20,000 adults in England in 2019 (White et al., 2019, Scientific Reports) with the question of how much nature a person actually needs per week. I did not want to believe the answer, I did not even want an answer. But it was as blunt as it was clear: 120 minutes. Below that there was no measurable effect. Above it the probability of good health was 59 percent higher and the probability of high well-being was 23 percent higher. How the 120 minutes are distributed apparently does not matter. One visit of two hours, two of one hour or three of 40 minutes had the same effect.

The Japanese turned this into medical practice. It is called Shinrin-yoku, forest bathing. At first this was met with a smile by nature people like me. But today I think differently about it. Because the research there goes further than in Europe. Trees release volatile organic compounds, phytoncides (Li, 2010, Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine). These activate natural killer cells in the immune system that destroy tumor cells. The effect lasts at least seven days after a forest visit. The essay on forest bathing is already on my list. You get the impression that while the Western world is still debating whether nature is good for you, in Japan it is being prescribed.

Our responsibility

Nature is not a luxury. The effects are universal and independent of education and income. A window with a view of trees costs little in planning. Just as little as a flower on the table. So nature is not a matter of taste, because the effects are physiological in nature and can be measured beyond doubt through blood pressure, heart rate, cortisol and so on. And that cannot be argued away.

Here is an extreme example: Singapore grew its population by two million people while simultaneously increasing its green space coverage from 36 to 47 percent. The false choice between urbanization and nature does not exist there. It only exists where nobody questions it.

The responsibility lies with all of us to look closely. But above all with those who plan cities and decide on budgets. The research with its data is there and it must be read so that consequences can be drawn that go beyond a few trees beside the road or the flowers on the table. Because people need nature.