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Journal of Biophilic Design

Journal of Biophilic Design

By: Vanessa Champion editor Journal of Biophilic Design
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Welcome to our podcast series from the Journal of Biophilic Design, where we interview workplace consultants, futurists, interior designers, architects, urban planners and those working in healthcare, wellbeing and other industries to find out the latest on Biophilic Design. www.journalofbiophilicdesign.com

Content copyright Journal of Biophilic Design, opinions copyright the speaker. Hygiene & Healthy Living Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Science Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Dusty Gedge - What if we put Life back onto every Roof in our Cities?

    Dusty Gedge - What if we put Life back onto every Roof in our Cities?
    Oct 26 2026
    What if every roof in London that could support nature became a living habitat? What if, instead of recreating the gardens and meadows we have always known, we designed our cities around the life that can actually thrive in them? For Dusty Gedge, pioneering green roof advocate and urban biodiversity expert, this is more than an appealing idea. It is a practical vision for the future of our cities, challenging the way we think about green roofs, urban nature and the role of biophilic design. As climate change brings increasingly extreme temperatures, heatwaves and intense rainfall, we need to rethink what we plant, where we plant it and what we expect nature to do. In our conversation for the Journal of Biophilic Design, Dusty made one thing clear: the objective is not just to make our cities “green”, it is to put life back into them. And just like the Journal here, he encourages us to go back to the original meaning of Biophilia to help us understand the bigger picture. Dusty’s journey began with a rare bird in Deptford. His interest in birdwatching led him to brownfield habitats and the possibility of recreating them on rooftops. This inspired the concept of the “brown roof”: not necessarily brown in colour but designed to replicate habitats that support wildflowers and wildlife. Yet, too often, green roofs are treated as products designed to deliver a particular appearance. We imagine lush meadows, manicured lawns and verdant gardens lifted into the sky. But these are not always the most appropriate habitats for rooftops, particularly as our climate changes. Dusty points instead to vegetated shingle, cockle-shell beaches, sand dunes and alluvial river gravels. These environments are exposed to wind and sun, with limited nutrients, much like many rooftops. Their vegetation may be sparse, but it can be remarkably well adapted to challenging conditions. A cockle-shell beach in Kent, he suggests, provides an excellent model for an extensive biodiverse roof in London. Nature does not always need to look lush to be thriving. A roof that appears brown in places may be supporting plants adapted to survive heat and drought, without constant irrigation. Designing for a changing climateAs heatwaves intensify and rainfall becomes increasingly unpredictable, our approach to urban planting must evolve. Landscapes that depend on regular watering to remain verdant may become less sustainable, while buildings and cities need better ways to manage intense rainfall. Dusty argues that we must start by understanding the conditions plants will face. Substrate depth, drainage, water retention, exposure and structural loading all matter. So does choosing plants that can survive the environment rather than those selected purely for their appearance. Some of the most resilient plants are small and understated. Others grow much taller than a designer might expect. Rather than forcing plants into rigid planting schemes, we should create the right conditions and allow nature to find its own balance. This requires a shift in thinking, from controlling nature to working with it, to make design more intelligent, informed by ecology and the realities of a changing climate. Biophilia is about our connection to lifeFor Dusty, biophilia is about how people connect with nature. He recalled meeting a man in Saudi Arabia who spoke emotionally about wanting to touch a palm tree in Riyadh. The palm represented an oasis, something meaningful in a predominantly desert landscape. The story illustrates why nature cannot be reduced to a single aesthetic. A desert can be beautiful. So can a windswept rooftop filled with wildflowers, or a patch of vegetation supporting insects and birds among concrete and glass. Biophilic design should respond to the nature of a place, its climate and its cultural context, rather than impose an idealised image of an English garden everywhere. A truly biophilic city is a city that makes room for life.Dusty encourages us to see a city as a network of habitats rather than a collection of isolated buildings. He compares the urban landscape to a mountain range, with different conditions at different heights. Higher roofs are exposed to more wind and sun and may suit dry, sparsely vegetated habitats. Lower levels can support different planting, including shrubs and trees. Balconies, courtyards, gardens and roadside verges all contribute to the wider picture. By creating a mosaic of habitats, we can support greater biodiversity while helping to cool cities, manage rainfall and improve building performance. There are opportunities to combine these benefits with renewable energy, too. Dusty describes projects exploring biodiverse roofs alongside solar panels, showing how energy generation and habitat creation can work together when designed from the outset. The challenge is to consider these benefits collectively, rather than maximising one at the expense of everything else. Designing ...
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    40 mins
  • Mindful Designing - Freyja Sewell on Biophilia, Neurodiversity and Positive Futures

    Mindful Designing - Freyja Sewell on Biophilia, Neurodiversity and Positive Futures
    Oct 21 2026
    There are many places where we can feel an overwhelm, for some of us, the overwhelm can be, well, overwhelming and trying to find somewhere to recalibrate can be difficult. So how can design help us feel safe, connected and able to participate in the world? Designer and interdisciplinary artist Freyja Sewell begins with nature, sensory experience and a willingness to imagine things differently. As a neurodivergent designer herself, Freyja is founder of HUUS Design, where she brings together art, technology, nature and sensory design to create gorgeous woven soft felt pods and other products including digital capability to help create environments that support human experience better. Her work is also woven by an ambition to make positive futures tangible. From lived experience to inclusive designFreyja’s journey began with her own experience of feeling overwhelmed by certain environments. As an autistic designer, she understands how noise, stimulation and a lack of privacy can make everyday spaces difficult to navigate. Rather than treating this sensitivity as a limitation, she has increasingly come to recognise how it can inform her creativity. That perspective led to the development of the HushPod, a freestanding, closable felt structure that creates a small, private retreat within a larger environment. Developed after university, the original concept emerged from her need to find somewhere peaceful to go when the world became too much. Freyja experimented with different materials before discovering thick wool felt. Its combination of strength, softness and tactility offered the qualities she was seeking, namely a beautiful object that could provide both physical enclosure and a sense of calm. Inspired partly by the womb-like quality of the form, the HushPod offered an alternative to retreating to a toilet (which a lot of people do!) or withdrawing entirely from public life! The response from others was also positive. People recognised their own need for quiet, privacy and space to regulate their emotions and senses. A personal design solution had revealed a much wider need. Bringing the forest into our everyday spacesNature has been a constant source of inspiration for Sewell, and biophilic research and principles now underpin both her artistic and design practice. She describes the forest as a genuinely immersive experience. The sensation of walking on the ground, the smells, the sounds, the air and the textures all contribute to an encounter that engages the whole body. Yet not everyone can easily access these experiences. Physical barriers, socioeconomic circumstances and the realities of urban life can all limit opportunities to spend time in nature. Her approach seeks to distil some of nature’s qualities into environments to meet people where they are. Through sensory spaces, including an art therapy pod developed in collaboration with Ebony Easley, she explores how design can bring elements of nature into settings where people may need additional support. These spaces can offer an introduction to nature’s restorative qualities, while encouraging a deeper connection with the living world beyond their walls. A different vision of the futureFreyja’s thinking is also shaped by her experiences in Japan, where she has lived three times. She is fascinated by approaches that understand nature and technology as interconnected rather than opposing forces. For her, a positive future is one in which these relationships become reciprocal: technology exists in ways that support a healthier balance between people and the natural world. This vision depends on creativity and diverse ways of thinking. Repeating familiar approaches, she suggests, is unlikely to produce fundamentally different outcomes. That makes neurodiversity an important part of the conversation about the future of design. Making room for everyoneWhere would she like to see her designs make the greatest difference? In restaurants and bars, where quieter retreats could help neurodivergent people participate more comfortably in social life; in educational settings, where young people could find opportunities to regulate and contribute; and in hospitals, where patients, families and staff may need moments of calm amid stressful surroundings; and environments in which more people feel able to belong. Perhaps that is one of the most important lessons biophilic design can offer, noteably designing for wellbeing means looking beyond how a space appears to consider how it feels to inhabit it. By listening to different experiences of the world, embracing sensory diversity and drawing inspiration from nature, we can begin to imagine places that work for more of us. Explore further: Discover the Journal of Biophilic Design’s Neurodiversity Issue, featuring research, science and inspiration for creating spaces that work for everyone. To learn more about Biophilic Design and how it can help support neuroinclusivity, ...
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    29 mins
  • The Glasshouse - Helping women in custody grow

    The Glasshouse - Helping women in custody grow
    Oct 7 2026
    The Glasshouse is using horticulture, employment and a deep connection with nature to give women leaving prison something they often desperately need: dignity, confidence and the chance to build a different future. I am joined by co-founder Kali Hamerton-Stowe alongside Ri, who came through the programme herself and now works on the senior team. A plant needs the right conditions, nourishment, care, light and time. Give it those things and given the opportunity, it grows. For Kali Hamerton-Stowe, co-founder of The Glasshouse, this has become the foundation of an extraordinary social enterprise supporting women approaching the end of their prison sentences. The Glasshouse began with disused greenhouses at HMP East Sutton Park, an open women's prison in Kent. Kali's friend Melissa had visited the prison and was struck by how difficult life could be for women approaching release. Finding safe housing and employment was a huge challenge, while the stigma attached to having been in prison created another barrier to rebuilding a life. The unused greenhouses suggested a possibility. Could they become somewhere women could learn horticultural skills, gain work experience and begin to imagine life beyond custody? Kali, whose own background is rooted in horticulture and a lifelong relationship with plants, helped develop the idea into a business plan. The proposal was put to the Ministry of Justice in 2020, and within around six weeks the first cohort of women was working with the Glasshouse. The organisation has since developed into a commercial social enterprise, growing and nurturing houseplants and providing interior landscaping and plant maintenance for corporate clients. Women receive horticultural training and experience while still in custody, and the Glasshouse continues to support them after release with employment and the transition back into society. But the story of the Glasshouse is about much more than horticulture. It is about what happens when someone is given the conditions in which they can rediscover their own value. Ri knows this from experience. She joined the Glasshouse programme while she was in custody, initially coming out on day release to work either in the shop or at the growing facility. It was in the growing facility that she says she "found her feet". Her explanation of why is particularly revealing. "When women find themselves in custody," she explained, "I think what we lose is dignity, privacy and value." In the growing facility, something changed. She could work alone. She could care for plants that needed her. She could organise them, nurture them and watch them grow. The plants gave her a sense that she was needed, and therefore that she had value. "I could be alone there, so I could be brave enough to allow certain thoughts to come to the forefront that I might not be able to do whilst in custody," she said. And yet she was not really alone. "Although I was alone, I was surrounded by plants, so I had company." It is difficult to think of a more succinct description of the human value of nature connection. Ri went on to explain that the Glasshouse invests in the woman rather than simply assessing the skills she already possesses. The organisation does not assume that a woman's previous life tells you what she is capable of becoming. Through the work, Ri discovered transferable skills she had never recognised in herself. She gained a City & Guilds qualification in horticulture and eventually moved from participant to employee. She has now worked with the Glasshouse for more than two and a half years after release. Her journey is not presented as a neat transformation in which prison is followed by an uncomplicated new life. Ri is candid that coming out of custody was difficult. Having choices again was challenging. But she had something many women leaving prison do not: continuity, a workplace, people who understood what she had experienced, and the opportunity to develop her skills within an environment where she was already known. That experience now enables her to support other women coming through the programme. The most moving part of our conversation came when Ri described how her relationship with nature itself had changed. In custody, she explained, women can be almost completely removed from the natural world. Some may spend as much as 23 and a half hours a day in their cells. Exercise yards can be concrete spaces surrounded by razor wire. Some women may not even be able to see the sky from their rooms. Then comes The Glasshouse. Suddenly there are plants. Soil. Growing things. Trees. Green. "I see green differently," Ri told me. "I also see trees differently." Then she said something that was really touching, and it is something that underpins the principle flowing through biophilia: "I know that I'm held by it." Held by nature. She described knowing that on a difficult day, during a difficult hour, or even during five difficult minutes, nature holds her....
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    39 mins
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