Bringing Nature Indoors with Virtual Reality: Human Responses to Biophilic Design in Buildings

A lecture by:

Drs. Jie Yin and John Spengler

Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health

Biophilia hypothesis suggests humans have innate connections to nature which may affect their health and productivity. Yet we currently live in a world that is rapidly urbanizing with people spending most of their time indoors. Therefore, biophilic design, which incorporates natural elements into the indoor environment, has received increasing attention in both design and health fields. The objective of this study is to investigate the short-term health impacts of biophilic design in buildings. To achieve that, we developed a tool by combining virtual reality (VR), eye-tracking and wearable biomonitoring sensors. With that tool, we conducted multiple experiments with different study design to measure physiological and cognitive responses to different biophilic indoor environments.