Designing Spaces That Connect People with Nature

IM-WALD-SEIN® Biophilic Design | Biophilic. Aesthetic. Multisensory

Nature as a Design Principle

We spend more than 80 percent of our time indoors – at home, at work, in healthcare settings, and in other built environments. The way these spaces are designed therefore has a profound impact on how we feel, recover, and focus.

Biophilic Design makes nature an integral part of the space: plants and natural materials work together with light, color, form, texture, and nature-inspired sounds and sensory elements to create environments that feel connected to the natural world.

People are at the heart of every concept: employees, patients, visitors, or guests, and the way they use and experience a space. We align design, function, and nature connection with their needs and with the specific character and purpose of each setting.

What you can expect: a tailored spatial concept with refined, practical biophilic solutions – from the initial analysis and selection of design elements to implementation with our design team and specialist partners.

Would you like to create spaces with a stronger connection to nature? We would be happy to develop a concept with you.

How we live and work has long been more than a matter of architecture, interior design, and personal taste. The WHO recognizes housing and workplace conditions as relevant factors in health and prevention. At the same time, the question of how the built environment affects us is gaining prominence in policy and professional debate as well as in broader social and cultural discussion. Urbanization, aging populations, and the effects of climate change add further urgency: How should the environments in which we spend our lives be designed so that they not only minimize harm but actively create good conditions for healthy living? The growing relevance of this issue is also reflected in more coverage in journalism and publishing.

Magazine Feature | Biophilic Design

Living Better, Feeling Better

How can good design create a space that genuinely supports its users? Writing for FOCUS, arts and culture journalist Gabi Czöppan brings together international examples from architecture and design, including Kengo Kuma’s Meditation House at Hotel Das Kranzbach and work by Yves Béhar, to explore the role a connection to nature can play in well-being and health.

Dr. Melanie H. Adamek, Head of the IM-WALD-SEIN® Institute for Forest Medicine and Forest Therapy, discusses the potential of biophilic design and explains why individual perception, use, and life circumstances matter just as much as design principles. The article also features the Institute’s Waldkapsel in Munich as a practical example of how qualities of nature can be experienced through multiple senses, even within a compact urban space.

Gabi Czöppan, “Schöner wohnen, besser fühlen,” FOCUS 44/2026, October 23, 2026, pp. 94–95.

Feature Article | Biophilic Design

A Practice Designed to Put Patients at Ease

How can a medical practice reduce anxiety rather than add to patients’ stress? medico JOURNAL explores different approaches to biophilic design: Ines Van Meenen and interior designer Ulrike Schulschenk transform a pediatric dental practice into a nature- and vacation-inspired environment.

Designer and biophilic design expert Simone Raus turns the focus to adults and to the often underestimated sensory demands of our built environment. She explains how light, acoustics, air movement, and other natural sensory stimuli can be combined to create a sense of closeness to nature that engages multiple senses, and why their interaction is what matters. The Japanese concept of komorebi illustrates how qualities of nature can be translated into interior spaces.

Gabriela Beck, “Praxis mit Entspannungsfaktor,” medico JOURNAL, 02/2021, pp. 64–72.

For the FOCUS feature, Gabi Czöppan spoke in greater depth with Dr. Melanie H. Adamek about how spaces affect us, the idea behind biophilic design, and what can be translated from these concepts into practical design decisions.

I wouldn’t put it that broadly. But we underestimate how strongly spaces affect us—and how differently people respond to them. A space should not simply conform to certain design ideals. Above all, it should fit the person who lives in it: their perception, their needs, their everyday life, and their current life circumstances.

Color is a simple example. The same color scheme may feel calming to one person and unpleasant to another. These reactions are not merely a matter of taste; they are also shaped by experience, cultural influences, and personal history. Our current state matters as well—for example, whether we are stressed, exhausted, or ill.

We spend a very large part of our day indoors, where light and other visual stimuli, sound, temperature, and air quality are constantly affecting us. It is well established, for example, that light influences our circadian rhythm, that noise can interfere with sleep and stress regulation, and that poor indoor air quality can affect health. Screen use in the evening can also disrupt sleep, particularly because it demands directed attention and keeps us in an alert rather than a restful state. I would be more cautious about “smooth surfaces.” A smooth wall does not make anyone sick. But a large number of hard, sound-reflective surfaces can create poor acoustics, for example, and that in turn can affect how comfortable and relaxed we feel in a space.

The more fundamental question is whether a space gives the individual enough opportunity to recover. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. One person may need more retreat and fewer stimuli; another may benefit from openness, light, or greater sensory richness.

This is where a common thread emerges. For most people, being in nature is strongly associated with calm, relaxation, and restoration. It therefore makes sense to design interiors in ways that draw conceptually on those qualities—for example through daylight, natural materials, and forms that reflect organic structures.

A restorative space does not follow a rigid formula. It creates conditions in which we can feel comfortable and recover in ways that suit us individually.   

Is biophilic design more than a few plants and wood-look finishes—or are we being sold a wellness trend as a health promise?

Biophilic design is something quite different from simply decorating an interior with individual elements of nature. Some people are happy to have many houseplants around them, caring for them and watching them grow. They talk to them and even stroke them. And that does them good. Other people are simply overwhelmed by plants and may even stop wanting to enter the room because what they mainly see there is their own failure and decay.

At its core, biophilic design is about translating qualities of natural environments into architecture and interior design. These include daylight and views, real or constructed connections to nature, natural materials, and organic forms and structures. More importantly, it also includes spatial experiences we know from nature: retreat and openness, variation, orientation, and different kinds of sensory input.

The key point is this: nature is understood as a guiding design principle. That is what distinguishes serious biophilic design from a green lifestyle look.

At the same time, research into the health effects of natural elements indoors can create a misleading impression. Many studies examine individual elements of nature and their effects on well-being, stress, or health.

There is a simple methodological reason for this. I can isolate the effect of a plant or a view of nature relatively well. It is much harder to do that in a space composed of many interacting factors. Light, materials, acoustics, spatial qualities, and connections to nature all work together. I cannot say that 10 percent of the effect came from the plant, 20 percent from the view, and 15 percent from the sounds. Research therefore has to break an overall concept down into components in order to measure effects. But that does not mean that biophilic design itself is simply the sum of individual natural elements.

Biophilic design is therefore neither a wellness gimmick nor a health promise. Its strength lies in translating what we know about the qualities of natural environments that can benefit us into thoughtful design, professionally tailored to the space, its use, and the individual. 

Are healthy homes and healthy workplaces becoming a new luxury for the affluent?

In fact, it is exactly the opposite. The professional concepts behind them come from public health. The WHO has developed guidelines for healthy housing as well as a framework for healthy workplaces.

The fundamental question is how housing and workplace conditions need to be designed so that they do not undermine health but instead protect and promote it as far as possible. And this is precisely where social inequality becomes visible: people with fewer financial resources are more often exposed to noise, heat, overcrowded housing, and other conditions that can adversely affect health, while having fewer opportunities to avoid them.

The issue becomes a luxury only when these basic conditions are turned into exclusive products. Healthy spaces should not be a status symbol. They should be the standard.

If you could change only three things in a home so that people sleep better, feel calmer, and recover more quickly, what would they be?

We live surrounded by thousands of things. If I simply chose three of them without knowing the person who owns them, the chances of picking the right three would be vanishingly small. Seriously, I would rather ask three questions.

1. Where, or in what situations, do you notice that your home feels more draining than restorative? Is it noise, light, clutter, lack of space, insufficient privacy, poor air quality, or simply too many things competing for your attention at once?

2. Is there a place in your home where you noticeably unwind more quickly than elsewhere, and what is different about it? More space, fewer objects, a particular view, different light, a greater sense of shelter, better acoustics, or simply fewer distractions? Those differences can be very revealing.

3. In what kind of natural environment do you recharge best, and what exactly about it feels good to you? Is it openness or enclosure, light and shadow, sounds, scents, movement, or particular colors and materials?

Ideally, the three changes almost emerge on their own from the answers. The residents can then recognize for themselves what they want to remove, change, or add so that the home better fits them and their need for restoration.

First, five things need to be right: air quality, lighting, temperature, acoustics, and workplace ergonomics. These are not optional extras; they are the foundation of a good workplace. Only then does the question of three changes become truly interesting. We can ask what the specific work actually requires: more opportunities for retreat or more interaction, fewer distractions, a stronger connection to nature, different sightlines, or greater flexibility to adapt the workplace to the task at hand.

A good example is a project by our biophilic design team led by designer Simone Raus for a leading Munich-based distributor and service provider of technical products that handles more than 6,500 picks a day.

At the end of a fully automated logistics line, employees prepare small parts for shipment and inspect them. The work is fast-paced and requires highly precise, sustained attention over extended periods.

The workflow and location were fixed. Employees worked in an area without direct daylight and looked toward a dark wall while performing their tasks.

That immediate environment was what we redesigned, using relatively straightforward measures. We introduced controllable, daylight-quality lighting. The dark wall directly in the employees’ field of view was replaced with a professionally produced large-format forest image, roughly four by eight meters.

Carefully placed lighting effects added depth to the komorebi motif—the interplay of light and shadow in a forest. We also used scent diffusers and a natural forest essence that employees reported finding pleasant. What is particularly interesting is that the work process itself remained completely unchanged. Only the immediate environment was altered. The result: packing errors fell measurably, while the quality of the work environment and employee satisfaction improved.

Examples like this show how effective relatively modest design interventions can be when they are precisely matched to the activity and the setting.

Healthcare

Landmark study: Views of nature and postoperative recovery
How much even a view can influence recovery was demonstrated as early as 1984 in Roger Ulrich’s widely cited study of 46 patients recovering from gallbladder surgery. Half had a window view of trees, while the other half looked onto a brick wall. Patients with a view of nature had shorter postoperative hospital stays, required less potent pain medication, and received fewer negative evaluations in nurses’ notes. The study became an important early milestone in research on evidence-based healthcare design. Ulrich, R. S., Science, 1984

Clinical study: Plants in the patient rooms
A clinical study found that patients recovering from surgery in rooms with plants and flowers reported less pain, anxiety, and fatigue than patients in comparable rooms without plants. Their systolic blood pressure was also lower. Park & Mattson, 2009



Review: Nature in hospitals can support recovery

A 2024 scoping review found that exposure to nature during hospital stays can support patient outcomes, with benefits seen particularly for anxiety, pain, and patient satisfaction. Guidolin et al., HERD, 2024

Workplace

Field study: Green offices and productivity
Marlon Nieuwenhuis and colleagues conducted three field experiments in real offices in the UK and the Netherlands, comparing deliberately minimalist “lean offices” with workplaces enriched with plants. Employees in the greener offices rated their work environment, concentration, and workplace satisfaction more favorably. Objective productivity also improved in one of the experiments. Nieuwenhuis et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 2014

Recent study: Living walls and stress regulation
A 2025 study examined how a living wall affected participants during a demanding working-memory task. In front of the living wall, participants showed greater physiological relaxation than in front of a shelf of objects, while cognitive performance remained unchanged. Serra et al., Scientific Reports, 2025

Systematic review: Nature in the office and stress

A systematic review examined how biophilic elements in workplace settings affect employees’ stress responses. The research included features such as plants, views of nature, daylight, and other forms of nature exposure in the workplace. Ríos-Rodríguez et al., Healthcare, 2023

Living Spaces

Experimental study: Biophilic residential environments and stress recovery
How does a space affect us when several biophilic elements work together? A study with 94 participants compared residential environments with and without features such as natural light, ventilation, and greenery. In the biophilic setting, skin conductance decreased more strongly during recovery, indicating a more favorable physiological stress response. Al Sayyed & Al-Azhari, Frontiers in Virtual Reality, 2025

Materials study: How much wood feels right?
Researchers compared full-scale room interiors with 0, 45, and 90 percent visible wood. The different proportions produced different physiological responses, while the room with 45 percent wood tended to receive the highest comfort ratings. Tsunetsugu et al., Journal of Wood Science, 2007

Comparative study: Real wood or wood-look finishes?

Eighty-three participants experienced rooms finished either with real Japanese cedar or with printed wood-look panels. Systolic blood pressure decreased significantly in the room with real cedar, while no significant change was observed in the comparison room. Sun et al., Journal of Wood Science, 2020