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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
  • 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
  • The Bath, the Bins and the Biology of Light

    The Bath, the Bins and the Biology of Light
    Sep 28 2026
    Our bodies evolved under changing natural light. So what happens when we spend our lives beneath a ceiling of artificial illumination? Dr Shelley James, known as the Light Lady, explains why light may be one of the most important — and overlooked — elements of biophilic design. We often talk about biophilic design in terms of plants, timber, water, natural materials and views of nature. But there is another fundamental element of the natural world that is so pervasive we can easily overlook it: light.Dr Shelley James, founder of Age of Light Innovations, lighting consultant, educator and advocate for healthier environments, believes we need to rethink our relationship with it. Her message is both simple and profound: light isn't merely something that allows us to see. It is information. Our bodies are constantly reading it, interpreting it and responding to it. “Every cell in your body is responding to light one way or another.”Light is one of the strongest signals our bodies receive about what time it is. Deep within the brain, the body's internal clock uses light and darkness to coordinate a remarkable sequence of physiological processes — from alertness and appetite to heart rate, hormones, blood chemistry, muscle function and sleep. Our internal clocks are not perfectly 24 hours. Left without environmental cues, they tend to drift. Natural daylight — changing in intensity, colour and spectrum from dawn through midday to dusk — continually resets that internal timing system.This is where biophilic design has an extraordinary opportunity. We evolved with changing lightNatural light is not static. Morning light is different from midday light, which is different again from the low, warm light of evening. Yet much of the built environment gives us something remarkably unlike this: a uniform ceiling of artificial light that may remain essentially unchanged from morning until night. And the consequences go far beyond aesthetics. Shelley explains that the eye is effectively an extension of the brain, and that processing visual information is energetically expensive. The visual system is constantly working out what something is, where it is, whether it matters and whether we need to respond.There is also another pathway through the eye, involving specialised cells containing the light-sensitive protein melanopsin. These cells are particularly responsive to blue wavelengths associated with the sky and help regulate the body's non-visual responses to light — including the circadian system, mood, attention and pupil response.In other words, we don't simply see light. Our bodies use it to understand the world around us. Think beyond brightnessFor designers, this means that specifying light cannot simply be a question of achieving the required number of lux. Shelley argues for the right quality of light, in the right place, for the right person, at the right time.That means thinking about daylight first: how can it be brought deeper into a building, reflected from surfaces or borrowed from adjacent spaces? It means considering the quality of artificial light too — including its colour rendering, spectrum, flicker and distribution. Colour temperature is measured in Kelvin. A higher Kelvin value produces a cooler-looking light: around 6,500K appears much closer to a cool daylight sky, while 2,700K is warm and associated more closely with evening.But Shelley makes an important distinction: colour temperature is not the same as colour rendering. A 6,500K 'daylight' lamp can still render colours poorly. High-quality light should reproduce the spectrum of daylight as closely as possible, allowing materials, skin tones and colours to appear naturally.This matters particularly in healthcare, where poor-quality light can make people appear unnaturally green or grey, but it matters everywhere. If our environments are telling our brains that something is wrong or unfamiliar, we are asking them to work harder than necessary. Light can help the body put the bins outPerhaps Shelley's most memorable analogy is the idea of the body needing to “take the bins out.”Our bodies accumulate biological by-products throughout the day. Sleep is not simply switching off: it is a period of restoration and maintenance. Adenosine builds up with activity, creating what Shelley describes as a kind of pressure for sleep, while melatonin helps prepare the body for rest. Think of it as a bath filling throughout the day. As we sleep, the plug is gradually pulled and the level drops. By the early hours of the morning, the system is particularly vulnerable to being disturbed. But if we repeatedly override those signals — staying stimulated, working late, eating at inappropriate times or exposing ourselves to the wrong light at the wrong time — the processes that should happen during rest can become disrupted. “Nature it kind of goes, hmm, what can I do here? And it just grows gradually and it tries ...
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    40 mins
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