Wellbeing, Nature-inspired Design & their link to Sustainability.

Wellbeing and Sustainability

As we move into 2023, it feels a natural time to look towards how the design of our homes and gardens can play a role in human health, wellbeing and sustainability.

Thanks to an evolving evidence base, we understand more how our buildings and landscapes impact our physical and psychological senses.  We now know how to create spaces that enhance rather than hinder our personal wellbeing and we can measure – and then improve – the quality of our air, light, water and temperature control. Together with spatial and aesthetic considerations, we can design our home environments to optimise restfulness and fulfilment – living spaces that fuel our bodies, move us, keep us connected and inspire our best work.

A New Journal Series – Wellbeing and Sustainability.

These elements have always been central to our response to a client’s individual brief, but now we are being asked how they align to our commitment to sustainability, to our ethical design principles and to how we connect our clients’ homes to the outdoors and nature.

So now as we approach 2023, we are bringing these themes together into a new series, curated and edited by our Sustainability Lead, architect Laira Piccinato.

Each month, we will focus on a particular topic and consider how design, alongside innovation and technology, can bring positive benefits to the environment, to our planet as a whole, and crucially of course, to the individual level.

To launch the series, we ask Laira all about Biophilic Design – how as designers we answer the human need to connect with nature. Below we also share our Sustainability pledge to offset the carbon used in our projects by supporting British woods through the UK charity Woodland Heritage.

Future months in our Wellbeing & Sustainability series will cover:

• Designing for minimal energy consumption
• Embodied Carbon. What is it and what can we do about it?
• Thermal Comfort
• Sound
• Materials
• Mental health
• Community
• Innovation
• Air quality
• Water (management, quality, reclamation)
• Food & Drink

What is Biophilic Design?

Read our interview with our Sustainability Lead architect, Laira Piccinato.

Ethical design and the creation of sustainable homes.

Designing homes and gardens with a timeless quality and a legacy for future generations is at the heart of our purpose.  We are focused on solutions to increase energy efficiencies and reduce the negative environmental outputs from constructing beautiful homes.

With this in mind, we are delighted to be supporting Woodland Heritage, a fantastic UK charity working for the future of British woods.

We are calculating the volume of carbon produced in each of our projects and the resulting number of native British trees we will need to plant to offset this. We then double this amount and donate it to Woodland Heritage to support the full range of their woodland establishment, research and educational activities. Read more about it here.

What’s Next?

Our Sustainability Lead Laira Piccinato looks into Biophilic Design and our innate connection to nature.

Read more on our  Sustainability approach to design.

See our project with sustainability at it’s heart Water’s Edge.