Biophilic design frameworks: A review of structure, development techniques and their compatibility with LEED sustainable design criteria

Environmentally sustainable design approach is characterised using design frameworks, a pre-determined set of criteria guiding designs to achieve sustainability provided in way of. green building rating tools. Recently, these green building design outcomes were criticised for lack of emphasis on human nature connectedness where biophilic design was identified as an approach that enhance nature connectedness. There is a growing trend in the building industry to incorporate biophilic design criteria into green building rating tools. However, the sustainable design approach is highly quantitative whereas biophilic design is qualitative. Hence, thorough understanding of both frameworks is required to develop a design framework overcoming the compatibility challenges. Furthermore, unlike the large volume of literature on green building rating tools, biophilic design frameworks are scarcely studied.

Therefore, the aim of this paper is to fill this gap by 1) conducting the first analysis of all the current biophilic design frameworks to explore their structure and development techniques; and 2) examining the compatibility of biophilic criteria within frameworks with typical sustainable design criteria.

The study presents a review of biophilic design frameworks identified through an extensive literature review followed by content analysis to find the development stages, techniques, and compatibility with sustainability criteria. Our analysis of seven biophilic frameworks revealed four techniques that were used to develop themes for categories, criteria, design strategies and building components. These techniques are: 1) literature synthesis, 2) framework synthesis, 3) interdisciplinary ideation, and 4) expert knowledge. Biophilic framework criteria has an average of 43% compatibility with green building rating tool criteria. It can be concluded that biophilic design is a sensory place-making approach and sustainable design is a building performance-based approach with opportunities for compatibility. The findings assist to understand the techniques in developing a biophilic design framework compatible with sustainable design approach.