What is Biophilia?

Aishwarya Kumar Iyer

We invited biophilic designer and architect Veljko Armano Linta to create a short course with us. After much thought, he gravitated towards revealing a personal journey: how understanding biophilia helped him relearn his connection with nature.

In this article, we dive into a fundamental question — what does Veljko mean when he speaks about Biophilia? 

“When we understand love as the will to nurture and love another’s spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive. Love and abuse cannot coexist. Abuse and neglect, are by definition the opposites of nurturance and care” — Bell Hooks, all about love | New Visions

Before you begin to read this article, please go outside and find a largish stone, though not so big that it cannot be easily lifted and carried indoors. Bring it in, and immerse it in a pail of water or under a running tap.

Then place it before you on your desk — perhaps on a tray or plate so as not to spoil your desktop. Take a good look at it. If you like, you can look at it again from time to time as you read the article.

At the end, I shall refer to what you may have observed. (exercise borrowed from Tim Ingold, Essays on Being Alive)

We also ask you to keep a clock or your watch around you. On a piece of paper, write/ draw/ sketch/ or don’t, about this object and note the time you begin reading.

And we begin.

The Biophilia hypothesis suggests that humans seek a connection with nature and other parts of life and suggests that we have psychologically benefitted from being in close relations with our environment. The term Biophilia was first used by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), which described biophilia as “the passionate love of life and of all that is alive.”

The term was later used by biologist Edward O. Wilson in his work Biophilia (1984), which proposed that the tendency of humans to focus on and to affiliate with nature and other life-forms has, in part, a genetic basis. This, according to Veljko Armano Linta is the premise of Biophilia.

Cognitive and Spiritual or Mind-Body Connection with Nature

One of the motivations of biophilia as a practice and thinking is to see things differently. Veljko sees several parallels between the understanding of Biophilia and Taoism. Taoism or Daoism is a philosophy of Chinese origin that emphasizes living in harmony with the Tao or the source, pattern and substance of everything that exists. Taosim recognises the entanglement of human-nature and places them in symbiotic relations to one another.

When contemplating the entanglement of human-nature, for Veljko, it is not adequate to simply curtail physical activities that damage the environment — “ “We can ‘know’ that we are biological beings, but if we behave in ways that are detrimental to local and global ecosystems, we are not really in touch with that reality”. Edward O. Wilson posed a similar question — “Will we love enough to save it[all beings]?”

One should strive to enhance both the quality of human life and the condition of the environment we live in. This is the Taoist understanding of sustainability too. Taoism, similar to Wilson and Veljko, believes that if we use our natural ability to learn, if we become a little more attentive and start looking into the depths of things, we will be surprised — “opposites are not really opposites, but complementaries, and we can use these complementarities to design a better, more connected life”. All of them share a similar intention, that Biophilia, or the innate affinity towards for life required the affinity to be nurtured.

“So” continued Veljko, “the aim is to incite a curiosity in people, especially in urban areas: How aware am I that I am a living being, part of a web of life? How is the opportunity for that connection present in the way I navigate (not just physically) my environment and how does that affect my awareness? How do we influence the world if that awareness is actively present in us, and how if it is not? How do we make it more present?”. For Veljko, this practice begins by seeing things differently. 

Worldview follows Design and Design follows worldview

AK: How does biophilia help recognise the difference between the two?

VL: There is a really nice book, I don’t know you might have read it by Daniel Christian Wahl — Designing Regenerative Cultures. Design is basically a human activity that we all do. It is not something that just designers do. Design is recognising that there is a need in us, and intention to satisfy that need and finding a way to satisfy it, which involves planning an action that takes place in our environment. Because we live in an environment. Be it physical, be it ecological, be it social or economic. We are going out and doing something to satisfy needs or percieve needs. This whole process is the design process. This is how we shape our lives. We shape it for ourselves and we shape it for others too. Sometimes we are born into things that have already been designed. Like we are born in a city, or a building or a system where we can vote or we cannot vote. We are basically born into a lot of choices that are already made for us. Or we don’t have to be born in it, but by living twenty years somewhere, a lot of choices are made for us, we might not even be aware, but they are choices. So it is a matter of design. We are consciously manipulating our reality.

Now, when we are born into something like that or when we are a part of it without realising, this forms our worldview without even us knowing it. It forms what we perceive as normal, or expected or even natural, or we maybe see it as the only way. That kind of a worldview will obviously affect our subsequent choices, and our subsequent design decisions, our subsequent decisions of how to do things and how to make things. So it is a kind of a circle. So, worldview follows design and design follows worldview. This can go in constructive or destructive directions. 

One of the core aims of actively practicing Biophilic is to get people to seeing things differently because this will help with anything in their lives. They will have the opportunity to influence that circle of worldview of design. Because if you can think differently, and perceive something that has not been a part of your routine perception, then you can start asking questions and start noticing your choices and the choices others have made for you. You can ask — Ah! so what is the affect of this? Okay, so if I don’t like the affect and I am a part of this process, is there anything I can do, and how can I do it differently? How can I repair things? How can I be an agent of regeneration? — 

Invitation to Reassess our Routines

While we have been bombarded with the practice of sustainable thinking, that is, to maintain or prevent the overexploitation of resources, we have also faced a personal crisis. Why do we do certain things? Why do we use certain materials? How do we make decisions based on consequences that we don’t notice? How do we balance personal needs and global sustenance?

AK: We understand sustainability as a point of balance, which recognises the basic needs that are met for all beings, present and future. Every action of ours has an effect, every inaction has an effect too. How can we navigate this personal-global path of sustainability?

VL: We have to eat, we have to breathe. We have to physically take up space and move through it. Trying to desist from any kind of action and influences is impossible. As long as do have an action, it’s important to realise what it is. If you are flying or sailing to an island and have a carbon footprint because of that, well, make good use of it. We are carbon factories ourselves. Does it mean we are going to kill ourselves, in order to not have a carbon footprint. We are going to make the best with the fact, that we are here and we have an effect. 

I think it can be quite daunting to start realising what kind of influence is that we have. When we realise that there are so many things that we are influencing. It’s especially easy to forget this influence in cities. Because we are simply not seeing it. And we might have parks, and we have nature. But we are not aware of the influence we have on different parts of nature that we don’t see. When someone tells you about this influence you have on nature, that we do have an influence on nature, it’s natural to say — Ah! Come on, that’s too much to think about even. I have my own problems, my own daily problems, my rent, so don’t give me that thought about my influences that I cannot see — 

But there is a point where we can say — I am not threatened by seeing things. This has to be a switch, wherre you can accept it. Okay, give me the truth. I can take it. I can even go through anger and depression and maybe see how I can do small things in my routine, like acupuncture points, that begin to make a difference. For example, I can decide to buy from farmers instead of supermarkets — That itself is a huge influence! And it can be a big change in one’s routine. So it is a matter of navigating changes in your practices and routines. 

It’s useful of course to have routines, because they save us time. But at the same time, it is dangerous because they entrench us, in ways of doing something that is not the most constructive. It’s all about reassessing things, to see in a different way and to imagine what it would be if it was designed differently. There always seems to be a threat implied or perceived when someone talks about changing routines. 

While speaking of routines, we wondered what affinity to nature meant. In his famous text of 1854, Henry David Thoreau describes his desire to leave the urban life and live with nature.

“The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were: its complete retirement, being, about two miles from the village, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a broad field; its bounding on the river, which the owner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between me and the last occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees, gnawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I should have; but above all, the recollection I had of it from my earliest voyages up the river, when the house was concealed behind a dense grove of red maples, through which I heard the house-dog bark”

(Thoreau, Where I Lived and What I Lived For, Walden)

When we speak about nature, our imagination tends to move in one of these directions — To have land, to have a garden, to live on the outskirts in nature, to have a house of earth and sustainable clothes, and to catch or harvest a meal with integrity. When thinking about affinity to nature, the imagination always moves this way. In the direction outside the city.

The recent climate crisis and pandemic has made us recognise how our actions affect nature, and subsequently how nature affects us. We have been forced to rethink or think differently our relationship with nature, and what nature means to us. 

AK: Practicing Biophilia tends to have a romanticised idea around it. From artists, authors to certain practices in sustainable living, we are shown as nature to be something outside our homes and cities and in the forests and gardens surrounded by Nature with a capital N. While on one hand this is one way to rebuild our relationship with nature, do you feel this risks simplifying the practice of Biophilia? 

VL: There are sometimes these romantic notions of Nature and Biophilia and of ourselves, which very important and good and they come periodically in our life. About all sorts of things, even people. 

But then there is the step of engaging. If Thoreau was here alive, he would want to engage with the frost. Romantic notions are a part of a movement. A whole project or a meme that is spreading. And that has an effect, because it is a potent meme. Because it is a part of complex systems. It starts to ripple and you have no idea what it is going to cause. 

With such strong memes as Biophilia or ‘Return to Nature’, you can actually start very concrete things. Like the Eco Village movement that has 10,000 villages around the world. The romantic ripple can actually extend far beyond their own reach. 

It’s about these stories that can inspire us to harness change.

At this point Veljko tells us the story of a material called Gypsum Cardboard, which are used to build partition walls. A hollow insulated board that is hollow on the inside. We don’t notice this material because it is painted on. He calls this a mute material. It doesn’t tell you anything about itself. A neutral grey, thin slab, made of ground gypsum that is glued together to form a panel. 

We are now surrounded by things that don’t tell us anything about how they are extracted from nature. Gypsum is made of rock, but we don’t see stone, we don’t see nature, we don’t notice anything. We don’t see any kind of story of how it used to be, or how it might return to nature. What does this do to us? To live around objects without knowing where they come from? 

What would be different if it was a wooden panel? If we could see that is was a piece of wood and we could identify with it in a completely different way, to know that it had come from the forest. If we could imagine the gypsum panel, we would probably imagine factories. 

Feminist writers since the previous century have asked us to look at different stories. Who is telling the stories? Who are they being told by? How are they being told? Stories beyond the dominant narratives that surround us. From Haraway’s urge to mix science fiction with our social reality, Gayatri Spivak’s demand of us to consider the margins, Anja Kanngieser’s and Rosi Braidotti’s push towards non-human narratives of creatures and technology, and even Achille Mbembe, Audre Lorde and Bell Hooks have highlighted the power structures that feed the stories we here. How much of the materials that we are told we need, do we actually need? How much of how we see nature is really nature? 

Who is telling the stories? Who are they being told by? How are they being told?

In the introduction of his book ‘The Ecological Thought’, Timothy Morton draws a different world. His rendition of living with nature is filled with life and emotions. Think of the trees with eyes in Snow White that scared her into a faint delirium or Linda Hunt’s rendition of Grandmother Willow in Pocahontas, think of Wall-E, Lion Kind, Bambi and The Little Mermaid. What these offered to the eyes of a child was the realisation that the non-human had stories to tell and roles to play, as thriving personalities that have a history, present and a future. This meant that they were a part of the same economy, politics and environment we were. 

You have to get your hands dirty if you are living in the physical world

Tending to nature invokes a whole range of emotions. The idea is to allow yourself to be confronted by the emotions, whichever way you want to begin, but to live with fully and intensely. What this asks of us, is to reimagine what we talk about when we talk about nature. Nature is certainly out there, in the forest, parks, seas and skies. But it is also around us in the urban environments we inhabit. 

AK: You mention very specifically that you wanted to focus on Urban Spaces. Could you elaborate a bit more on this?

VL: I wanted to emphasise that this is not about connecting with nature by going somewhere in nature. Into another realm. O na hike, to see a lake, to climb a mountain, sail, etc. It’s about your everyday environment and reconnecting in that environment. 

I think people who live in areas outside cities, it’s not necessary that they are connected with nature on a deeper level just because they live around nature. I don’t assume that. Because a lot of practices in rural areas, are destructive practices. Even farmers who farm their own land, not like industrial complexes, sometimes do damage or sometimes don’t really care about the whole systems, of the land or their environment. You have people living in villages or small towns who routinely throw their washing machines in creeks or forests. So I am not assuming that people have an active connection with nature just because they are more surrounded by it in cities. 

To use nature that are part of your surroundings to experiment. 

Now return to the stone that has been quietly sitting on your desk as you have been reading. Without any intervention on your part, it has changed. The water that had once covered it has evaporated, and the surface is now almost completely dry. There might still be a few damp patches, but these are immediately recognisable from the darker colouration of the surface. Though the shape of the stone remains the same, it otherwise looks quite different. Indeed it might look disappointingly dull. Though we might be inclined to say that a stone bathed in moisture is more ‘stony’ than one bathed in dry air, we should probably acknowledge that the appearances are just different.

What we can conclude, however, is that since the substance of the stone must be bathed in a medium of some kind, there is no way in which its stoniness can be understood apart from the ways it is caught up in the interchanges across its surface, between medium and substance. Stoniness, then, is not in the stone’s ‘nature’, in its materiality. Nor is it merely in the mind of the observer or practitioner. Rather, it emerges through the stone’s involvement in its total surroundings — including you, the observer — and from the manifold ways in which it is engaged in the currents of the lifeworld.