Imagining Biophilic Design

Imagining Biophilic Design: Telling Stories About the Future of Sustainable Architecture

Feb 2024—Feb 2025

This project uses creative approaches to investigate how members of the local Swansea community conceive of biophilic design, how they imagine the future of their own communities and how these ideas relate to wider issues of net zero and biodiversity. We work closely with Hacer Developments and BIOSWA (Biophilic Village), a unique building development located at the heart of Swansea city centre, which is the first integrated biophilic building in the world. Through workshops that use science fictional approaches to imagining the future and graphic novel forms to creatively co-construct an imagined biophilic future for Wales, this project empowers local communities to speculate and tell stories about the future of their own locales, their connection to others and the impact that these imagined futures have on their experiences of, orientations to and desires for these places. To structure these speculations, participants will be invited to develop a series of parameters for the design of future biophilic spaces, along with an outline of the repercussions that such transformations will have on their locale. Through such co-creative storying and design this project will engage local communities to speculate about the potential for biophilic design to transform their built environments and will enable them to contextualise their values and orientations to climate change solutions.