Biophilic design in a corporate setting

Summer blog series by Rachel Huff, entering freshman in the UGA College of Environment & Design and participant in Arcollab’s Foundations in Design after school program
Story inspiration from: https://www.fosterandpartners.com/projects/apple-park
Image below from: https://www.thehimalayanarchitect.com/architecture/biophilic-design-reconnecting-humanity-with-nature/

 

Biophilic design is shown to help increase productivity so it is no surprise that many companies are employing aspects of biophilic design in their offices. Today I want to explore one of the most notable instances of this which is Apple Park, the corporate office of Apple. This office rings around a park which not only allows employees to have a place to go and connect to nature but also provides better natural lighting.

The park in the center of the building has over 4 miles of walking trails and includes ponds, sculptures, and social spaces. This park is the perfect space for workers to take a break and embrace the outside world.

Locating a park in the center of the building also provides natural views and sunlight to the building’s interior spaces. The walls of the building are filled with glass windows that look out onto the park. This allows people who are working inside of the building to still have a connection with nature which, in turn, helps to improve productivity. The natural lighting that the windows supply is also very important to productivity as well as the overall happiness of the workers.

The Apple headquarters is also fully powered by renewable energy. While it doesn’t provide any direct benefits to productivity, it does work to help protect the environment from pollution. It has been found that workers will have more pride in the place where they work because it is sustainably powered.

Apple did a good job at using biophilic design to create a space that will increase their workers productivity and happiness and also minimizes the impact of the building’s footprint on the planet.

 

The next blog post will be my last for this summer so I will be doing a recap of everything I have gone over the past two months. I hope you have enjoyed this exploration with me, and thanks for reading!