Nature Is Not a Design Element

I grew up in the Alps and still live there. I’m a nature person and I need the mountains outside the window and the forest behind the house. Because of work I often spend a few days in a row in a city. I really enjoy the first day. I watch the people in cafés, I wonder whether the tree-lined streets are already enough nature, and I keep watching people, what they do and how they deal with each other. That’s what I often miss in the country. In the city there are people everywhere and you want to see the stories behind them.

By the second day I usually start missing nature. Less as an obvious longing, I feel it physically. I get restless, look for open space, want to get out of the narrowness. It has always been like that. But the more conscious I become of it, the more clearly I understand this need that isn’t only mine.

There’s even a name for it: biophilia. Edward O. Wilson coined it in 1984. It describes the human tendency to feel drawn to living systems and he thought it was innate. Research has confirmed him on many points, on some not.

What Drives Me

Together with other people who engage deeply with this topic, I co-founded the photo exhibition series Concrete Human. We want to show what drastic influence the built environment can have on people. And in the course of this 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 deeper into the field. Not because science attracts me, but because I wanted to understand better why my sensations in the city, in the country, in rooms or in nature are the way they are.

Watching people in nature and in urban settings I notice that the moods differ strongly from one another. Moment by moment, highly individual in the sub-contexts of work, communication, conflicts. The range from calm and relaxed to stressed and exhausted is endlessly varied. One group laughs, the man at the footpath stares at his phone, everyone crowded together. Everyone comes from somewhere else and has to go somewhere else. So what am I looking at?

First I wanted to know whether there is science for what I see. It took a long time to find what I was looking for, and my answer was: partially. I read a lot about heart rate, blood pressure, cortisol, skin conductance. I read about working memory and attention. And I actually changed my behaviour in many ways, because for me past 50 the findings were partly alarming. But I also saw gaps: how can the mood of a specific person with a specific history in a specific moment in a specific space and context be captured completely? Where do the feelings have their place? The parts that are measured and those that aren’t become more clearly distinguishable. I’m not a scientist and I lack the terminology to put it professionally, but a lot becomes visible. Even the invisible takes shape. By seeing that it isn’t easily measurable. I’ve written other essays about this that go deeper into my view.

What Happens With the Body

Roger Ulrich ran an experiment in 1991 (Ulrich et al., 1991, Journal of Environmental Psychology). 120 subjects watched a stress film and then either a nature video or a city video. What was measured wasn’t what the 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 the lowest level since the stress film. With the city videos it sped up. I felt confirmed. I will probably never move to a city.

Hartig followed up in 2003 in the field (Hartig et al., 2003, Journal of Environmental Psychology). With 112 subjects who walked 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 matches the effect of light blood pressure medication. Those who then sat in a room with a view of trees saw their blood pressure drop further. Those in a windowless room did not.

It’s More Than Mood

Berman showed in 2008 that nature doesn’t only calm, it also makes the brain more capable (Berman et al., 2008, Psychological Science). This time 38 students took a 50-minute walk. Before and after, they did 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 effective as the city walk. 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 or not.

In another experiment, images of nature were enough. No real nature was necessary, just the visual information. Again I felt confirmed. My view out the window is enough, even when I sit inside and work. So the brain reacts to the pattern, not only to the place.

The Universal Finding

Koivisto published one of the most important recent studies in 2022 (Koivisto & Grassini, 2022, Journal of Environmental Psychology). He analysed 316 people with the question whether the positive reaction to nature was innate or learned. The finding was one of the biggest in all of environmental psychology. At least as far as I could see. Images of nature produced much more positive emotions than images of cities. And it also became clear that childhood experience with nature, personality, age, gender and so on have no influence on this. But: tolerance for cities is learned. That means people who grew up in nature find cities more unpleasant. They don’t 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 also doesn’t quite fit. Because the study measures emotions and I try to recognise 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 with them depends on what they bring.

Measurement Has Limits From My Perspective

In my early twenties I started working with meditation. Over the years I learned to shift my state of consciousness drastically within minutes. And there are studies that can measure this. For example through brain scans. But context still gets lost. Research measures the variables and yet life isn’t only made of them, but of much more complex states.

I can neither evaluate the studies qualitatively nor would I therefore doubt them. The physiological effects are there and the data can certainly be considered solid. Still I doubt that measurement results alone can explain what a room actually does to a person. The person brings their whole history, their mood, their consciousness in this moment. Two people in the same room naturally experience something completely different.

Because I’ve been dealing intensively with ontology for a while, it was clear to me that here you only need to add enough brainpower and AI to work out the differences in a nuanced way. Not inventing new measures, but putting the existing ones into new relationships with each other. Between science and architecture with all its measured values and unmeasured moods. Between what a room does and what a person brings.

One important experience for me was: photography helps with this. Because a photo shows the room and the person in it at the same time and makes visible this in-between space that science doesn’t capture and leaves unanswered.

It’s the Dose

White studied almost 20,000 adults in England in 2019 (White et al., 2019, Scientific Reports) with the question of how much nature a person needs per week. I didn’t want to accept the answer, I didn’t want any answer. But it was as blunt as it was clear: 120 minutes. Below that there was no measurable effect. Above that, the probability of good health was 59 percent higher and the probability of high well-being 23 percent higher. How the 120 minutes are distributed is obviously irrelevant. One visit of two hours, two of one hour or three of 40 minutes had the same effect.

The Japanese turned this into a medical practice. It’s called Shinrin-yoku, forest bathing. Among nature people like me it was initially laughed at. But today I think differently about it. Because the research there goes further than in Europe. Trees release volatile organic compounds, the phytoncides (Li, 2010, Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine). These activate natural killer cells in the immune system that destroy tumour cells. The effect lasts at least 30 days after a forest stay. 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 us, Japan is already prescribing it.

Our Responsibility

Nature isn’t a luxury. The effects appear universally and are 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. Nature is therefore not a matter of taste, because the effects are physiological and can be measured unambiguously through blood pressure, heart rate, cortisol and so on. And that can’t be argued away.

Here’s an extreme example: Singapore has grown its population by two million people and at the same time increased its green space share from 36 to 47 percent. The false choice between urbanisation and nature exists only where nobody questions it.

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