Nature Is Not a Design Element

I live in the Alps. Mountains outside the window, forest behind the house. When I go to a city I enjoy the first day. The people, the cafés, the tree-lined streets. I like watching how people move, what they do, how they interact. That is what I miss in the countryside. In the city people are everywhere and each one has a story.

On the second day I miss nature. Not as an idea, not as longing. Physically. I get restless and need open space. That was the case long before I knew there was a name for it.

The name is biophilia. Edward O. Wilson coined it in 1984. It describes the human tendency to be drawn to living systems. Wilson considered it innate. Research has confirmed him on many points, not on all. I will get to that.

What pulled me in

I co-founded Concrete Human, a photography exhibition that shows what buildings do to people. In the course of that work I read Ann Sussman’s book, collected studies, read my way into the research. Not because I am a scientist but because I wanted to understand something.

I observe people in cities and in nature. Their moods are completely different, tied to the moment, individual. Someone sits alone on a bench and is calm. Someone stands in a pedestrian zone and looks exhausted. A group laughs in a park. A man stares at his phone in a parking garage.

I wanted to know whether the science covers what I see. The answer is: partly. It measures heart rate, blood pressure, cortisol, skin conductance. It measures working memory and attention. What it does less well: fully capture the mood of a person in a specific moment in a specific space. Feelings often have no place in measurement results.

But the parts it does measure are clear.

What the body does

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 their bodies did. Heart rate, muscle tension, skin conductance. Four indicators, all significant. 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.

Hartig followed up in the field in 2003 (Hartig et al., 2003, Environment and Behavior). 112 subjects, 50-minute walk, 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.

That is not mood. That is physiology.

It goes beyond 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). 38 students, 50-minute walk, working memory test before and after. The nature walk improved the result by one and a half digits, the city walk by half a digit. 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 a second experiment pictures of nature were enough. No real nature needed, just the visual information. The brain responds to the pattern, not the place.

Universal

Koivisto published one of the most important recent studies in 2022 (Koivisto et al., 2022). 316 people. The question was whether the positive response to nature is innate or learned. The effect size was one of the largest in all of environmental psychology. Nature images triggered vastly more positive emotions than city images. Then the analysis: childhood experience with nature, personality, age, gender. None of it influenced the response.

But tolerance of cities was learned. People who grew up in nature find cities more aversive.

I found that remarkable. It matched what I observe, but it did not quite fit either. Because the study measures emotions and I see 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 the space does to them depends on what they bring.

The limit of measurement

I started working with meditation early on. I can change my state of consciousness within minutes. There are studies that measure this, brain scans that show it. But the overall context gets lost. Research measures variables. Life consists of states.

I do not doubt that the studies are correct. The physiological effects are there, the data is clean. What I doubt is that measurement results alone can explain what a space does to a person. A person brings their history, their mood, their consciousness in that moment. Two people in the same room experience something different.

That is why I work on ontology. Not to invent new metrics but to bring existing ones into relationship with each other. Between science and architecture. Between measurement and mood. Between what a space does and what a person brings.

Photography helps with that. A photograph shows the space and the person in it at the same time. It shows the gap that science leaves behind.

The dose

White studied nearly 20,000 adults in England in 2019 (White et al., 2019, Scientific Reports). The question was simple: How much nature does a person need per week?

The answer: 120 minutes. Below that no measurable effect. Above it a 59 percent higher probability of good health and 23 percent higher probability of high well-being. How the 120 minutes are distributed does not matter. One visit of two hours, two of one hour, three of 40 minutes. Same effect.

Japan turned this into medical practice. Shinrin-yoku, forest bathing. 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 Western world is still debating whether nature is good for you. Japan prescribes it.

Responsibility

Nature is not a luxury. The effects are universal, independent of education and income. A window with a view of trees costs in planning, not in operation. A flower costs nothing.

Nature is not a matter of taste. The effects are physiological. Blood pressure, heart rate, cortisol, working memory. That cannot be argued away.

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. It only exists where nobody questions it.

The responsibility lies with those who plan cities and decide on budgets. The research is there. The data is there. The question is whether anyone reads it. And whether anyone draws consequences that go beyond a few trees along the roadside.

People need nature. Not more of it. Closer.