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Global health emergencies such as Covid-19 have highlighted the importance of access to nature and open spaces in our cities for social, physical, and mental health. However, there continues to be a disconnect between our need for nature and our daily lived experience. Recent research indicates that our connectedness and relationship with nature, and in particular biophilic design, may be key for improving both health and quality of life. Rather than relying on abstract universal ideas of “nature”, using evidence-based biophilic design and policy at a building, neighborhood, and city scale, to link our daily lives with biodiversity, may encourage sense of place and make environmental action more meaningful. Then, improving our natural capital in the urban built environment might help address the current climate and disease crisis, as well as improving our physical and mental health. Drawing from emerging research and innovative practice, the paper describes key research and design paradigms that influence the way we understand the benefits of nature for different environments, including the workplace, neighborhood, and city, and explains where biophilic design theory sits in this field. Examples from recent research carried out in London and Chicago are provided, aiming at demonstrating what kind of research can be functional to what context, followed by a detailed analysis of its application supporting both human and ecological health. The study concludes indicating key policy and design lessons learned around regenerative design and biophilia as well as new directions for action, particularly with regard to climate change, sense of place, and well-being.
Maria Beatrice Andreucci; Angela Loder; Martin Brown; Jelena Brajković. Exploring Challenges and Opportunities of Biophilic Urban Design: Evidence from Research and Experimentation. Sustainability 2021, 13, 4323 .
AMA StyleMaria Beatrice Andreucci, Angela Loder, Martin Brown, Jelena Brajković. Exploring Challenges and Opportunities of Biophilic Urban Design: Evidence from Research and Experimentation. Sustainability. 2021; 13 (8):4323.
Chicago/Turabian StyleMaria Beatrice Andreucci; Angela Loder; Martin Brown; Jelena Brajković. 2021. "Exploring Challenges and Opportunities of Biophilic Urban Design: Evidence from Research and Experimentation." Sustainability 13, no. 8: 4323.
Humans are at the center of global climate change: The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are igniting sustainability with proactive, global, social goals, moving us away from the Brundtland paradigm ‘do nothing today to compromise tomorrows generation’. This promotes a regenerative shift in the sustainability concept, no longer only considering resources and energy, but also significant human-centric attributes. Despite this, precise ecological and sustainable attitudes have little prognostic value regarding final related individual human behavior. The global cultural challenge, dominated by technological innovations and business imperatives, alongside the mirroring technological fallacy and lack of ethical reasoning, makes the role of small actions, at individual and at academic scale even harder. This paper outlines the context in which universities can collaborate and contribute to triggering sustainability values, attitudes, and behavior within future regenerative societies. This contribution consists in three main areas: the first analyzes the issue of sustainability transitions at the individual scale, where influencing factors and value–behavior links are presented as reviewed from a number of multi and transdisciplinary scholars’ works. The second part enlarges the picture to the global dimension, tracing the ideological steps of our current environmental crisis, from the differences in prevailing western and eastern values, tradition, and perspectives, to the technological fallacy and the power of the narratives of changes. Finally, the task of our role as academics in the emerging ‘integrative humanities’ science is outlined with education promoted as an essential driver in moving from sustainability to regenerative paradigms.
Giulia Sonetti; Martin Brown; Emanuele Naboni. About the Triggering of UN Sustainable Development Goals and Regenerative Sustainability in Higher Education. Sustainability 2019, 11, 254 .
AMA StyleGiulia Sonetti, Martin Brown, Emanuele Naboni. About the Triggering of UN Sustainable Development Goals and Regenerative Sustainability in Higher Education. Sustainability. 2019; 11 (1):254.
Chicago/Turabian StyleGiulia Sonetti; Martin Brown; Emanuele Naboni. 2019. "About the Triggering of UN Sustainable Development Goals and Regenerative Sustainability in Higher Education." Sustainability 11, no. 1: 254.
Aiming for sustainable buildings and cities is critical to achieving a future that is socially just, ecologically regenerative, culturally rich, and economically viable. However, our current concepts of sustainability often exclude the essential domains of data, information, and the knowledge relating to the relationship between buildings and people that inhabit them. Thus, the research questions at the core of this paper have been as follows: Can technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) be used to create systems that enhance relationships between buildings and inhabitants? Can social networks and natural interactions support further research relating to human-centric design tools for the built environment? The Human Observation Meta-Environment (HOME) project was developed to address this question. The ICT architecture has been tested to observe and collect human behaviour data within a sentient room at the Politecnico di Torino (IT), where the inhabitants were strategically aware of their behaviours. Methods of analysis included technologies related to the domain of AI (such as Natural Language Analysis, Computer Vision, Machine Learning and Deep Learning) that have been used in social network analysis in connection with the word ‘comfort’, and definitions resonate strongly with the realm of regenerative design. Results were used to further research the role of users that could serve as leverages to design (both spaces and related smart systems) according to actual user needs. People from very different disciplinary backgrounds interacted with the prototype in a workshop and provided stimuli for further considerations regarding the possible technological, psychological, cognitive, cultural, social, political, and aesthetical impacts of the use of these technologies inside sentient buildings. The paper enriches the discourse on how ICT data can be organised and read in a human-centric regenerative design process perspective.
Giulia Sonetti; Emanuele Naboni; Martin Brown. Exploring the Potentials of ICT Tools for Human-Centric Regenerative Design. Sustainability 2018, 10, 1217 .
AMA StyleGiulia Sonetti, Emanuele Naboni, Martin Brown. Exploring the Potentials of ICT Tools for Human-Centric Regenerative Design. Sustainability. 2018; 10 (4):1217.
Chicago/Turabian StyleGiulia Sonetti; Emanuele Naboni; Martin Brown. 2018. "Exploring the Potentials of ICT Tools for Human-Centric Regenerative Design." Sustainability 10, no. 4: 1217.