New architectural devices to increase our connection to Nature from interior dwelling space: through our architectural heritage

Due to the increase in global population, there is a growing potential for losing regular “contact with Nature”; diminishing access to the documented wide range of associated human health and wellbeing benefits of daily interaction with the natural world. This leads us to a sensorily deprived built environment and to an increasing placelessness. Alienation from nature is not an inevitable consequence of modern life but rather a failure in how we have deliberately chosen to design and develop our world. In order to maximise dwellers’ connectivity to the natural environment in new and existing communities, new architectural design knowledge and useful creative strategies at all levels and scales of design, are urgently needed. Despite the increasing interest in this global concern, there exists limited knowledge and research into “how to integrate Nature with our interior dwelling space” and “how these solutions can enable their integration”. To bridge these gaps, I develop an innovative research project that unfolds and analyses the underlying forms of knowledge behind exemplary post-war Danish and traditional Japanese buildings that offer exemplary sensory experiences of the natural world - not only by visual contact but by other complex mechanisms - to inform us of a sustainable contemporary interior design practice, through Landscape, Architectural Interior and Biophilic Design approaches. The main aim is to effectively enhance the health and wellbeing of communities through daily interaction with Nature in the urban areas of the future, an urgent challenge at EU and Global level. The study opens a new research branch of Architectural Design and a new phase in the Biophilic design’s implementation for built environments. Moreover, it will make an important contribution to the EU-knowledge base on nature-based solutions