The evolution of design is a history of powerful transformations. The comfort, safety, beauty of human dwellings and shared spaces have housed a multitude of expressions of cultural, economic, geographical, social, and religious significance while responding to ever-evolving human needs and dynamic interactions. The key evolutionary steps of the building design are hereby highlighted in six featured approaches that have developed throughout the course of human history.

TRADITIONAL DESIGN

The buildings of the past emerge from close connectivity with place: geography, ecology, availability of materials, a sense of local beauty, and appreciation of nature in place. Traditional designs effectively protect within climate conditions, integrate with the local ecosystem, and express social and cultural beliefs that identify a community. Artifacts are often crafted by hand, with precious details that are created and masterfully executed using simple tools and readily available materials. The abstraction of natural patterns is found across cultures worldwide as a profound strategy to create beauty. A locally attuned expression of culture, history, social relationships, and traditions creates a sense of belonging, specificity, and place-driven uniqueness. Values are conveyed and shared among the members of the community, with love and care for the surroundings. Traditional designs deliver significance, well-being, and safety, however without achieving the level of convenience and comfort that we have grown accustomed to in ubiquitous buildings.

UBIQUITOUS DESIGN

Design in the industrial era assumes a new, distinctive expression with the advancement of international architecture in the age of the machine. Connections to place weakened: buildings became more or less the same worldwide, construction times compressed, scale and size of projects greatly expanded and so did profits. Materials are shipped and available globally, construction processes and operational protocols are shared across continents. Air conditioning systems, as an example, provide controlled, processed air, further separating the occupants from the outdoors, the local climate events, and often preventing views of the outside: air is pumped into too many windowless spaces. The contemporary and aspirational lifestyle has become homogenous across nations and cultures. In the age of separation from the natural local context and of immediate planetary digital connectivity, occupants feel safe in these buildings, trading local identity for a desired global lifestyle of convenience and sameness. Connection to local culture and traditions are diluted in a global digital era of a shared ideal of comfort, progress, and “cool”. Machines build buildings that work like machines, over-using energy and hyper-wasting resources across the entire life cycle of buildings and cities, which unfortunately age fast, generating further pressure on earth.

RESOURCE-CENTERED DESIGN

The idea of green buildings gained momentum in the past 50 years. The need for a third-party certification entity to validate green performance according to pre-established, clearly defined parameters emerged. In 1993 the USGBC (US Green Building Council) was founded and LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, focused on improving building performance and resource use was unveiled shortly after. Additional regional and national standards launched worldwide: Green Star, BREEAM, DGNB, CALGreen, Energy Star, Living Building Challenge (LBC) are some examples. 

LEED prescribes how buildings that work better than traditional ones can be designed, built, and operated. The focus is on using fewer resources - energy, water, materials - than in a traditional building that adheres to existing codes and requirements. Guidance to achieve indoor environmental quality and occupants' comfort is scientifically formulated. Most recently the LBC, brought forward by the International Living Building Institute (ILFI), launched a performance-based approach to green building certification. The LBC establishes clear building goals while allowing designers ample creative opportunities to identify solutions that achieve net-zero or net-positive energy or water, for example. The LBC is a powerful bridge to a renewed human-centered design approach, highlighting occupants' comfort and compellingly aspiring to beauty and happiness.

HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN

When speaking about human-centered design, referencing the Design Thinking approach is a must. The attention is on the users, the recipients of a design solution that must work from their perspectives. Design Thinking practitioners understand the user’s needs with great empathy. They value the significance of rapid prototyping as the path to quickly and effectively test a design solution. Feedback loops are key in the process, and they fit well within the iterative nature of the design discipline. A design does not stand on its own: it is created within a system of disciplines working together, and most importantly enters a context of existing co-dependencies and interactions, while transforming it. Design Thinking is human-centered system-thinking in action.

Human well-being and healthy buildings are important emerging topics within the human-centered design. On average, we spend 90% of our life indoors, experiencing environmental amnesia (Peter H. Khan Jr.). A child in the US spends less than one hour a day outside, which is less than a person in prison. WELL International Building Standards launched in 2013 to further define healthy buildings in accordance with more refined technical attributes regarding air, water, light quality, and with the inclusion of compelling design guidance to enhance movement, beauty, nourishment. Occupants’ well-being is a critical area of focus of the LBC as well where comfort, beauty, and happiness are achieved via the clearly defined adoption of Biophilic Design.

NATURE-CENTERED DESIGN

A nature-centered design approach puts nature at the center of design decisions. Biophilic Design and Biomimicry offer two very important perspectives: the first of aesthetic value, with emphasis on how nature looks, feels, and is experienced. The second of functional value, seeking to learn from nature how it works, using that knowledge to create solutions that are by their own definition sustainable.

Clarifying thoughts from the creators of these design disciplines is important. ”Biophilia is the urge to affiliate with other forms of life. It is the rich, natural pleasure that comes from being surrounded by living organisms." (Edward O. Wilson). “Biophilic design is the deliberate attempt to translate an understanding of the inherent  human affinity to affiliate with natural systems and processes – known as biophilia – into the design of the built environment.” (Stephen Kellert). Biophilic design brings nature into the built environment. Direct Nature, Natural Patterns, Culture and Place, offer 26 attributes to guide biophilic designers to the creation of a unique building that is the aesthetic expression of nature in the place where it exists, of the culture, and the community that it serves. Biophilic designs are specific to their place and spark beneficial emotions, reactions, and sensations of beauty and comfort in occupants and communities alike. Increased productivity, focus, creativity, and swift healing have been observed in occupants of biophilic spaces.

In Biomimicry, “the core idea is that nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers. They have found what works, what is appropriate, and most important, what lasts here on Earth. The conscious emulation of life’s genius is a survival strategy for humanity and a path to a sustainable future. The more our world functions like the natural world, the more likely we are to endure on this home that is ours, but not ours alone.” (Janine Benyus). When I first heard that design solutions must not harm, but “create conditions conducive to life”, I was deeply taken by this biomimicry ethos. Through re-connection with nature, I am learning how nature works. I can then consciously emulate nature’s design lessons in projects that function like nature, embodying the blueprints of life, and enhancing the need to belonging in contexts with specificity. What better definition of sustainability can we think of? 

Biophilia and Biomimicry are invitations to pursue a new and profound relationship of awe, gratitude, curiosity, love, and care of nature. Seeing nature as “other” to emulate, to celebrate, to learn from, to respect might hint at a potential human-nature dichotomy. However the exploration of the human-nature connection undoubtedly brings forward the awareness that we are nature, we are life. Can life then be at the center of all design decisions, and even more importantly do that with positivity? 

LIFE-CENTERED DESIGN 

Designs, by their own existence, carry changes to the context in which they are built. A project pro-jects something new to the world, carrying changes that can either subtract, be neutral, or add positively. A life-centered design approach, by putting life at the center of decisions, pursues positive relationships with mutualism, co-, and inter-dependency, reciprocity among all living species, human and not, within a specific context. I am deeply grateful and inspired by the work of Project Positive where “buildings and cities can contribute to ecosystem services, shifting human impact from negative to positive”. “Nature-based design solutions optimize performance while benefiting people and the planet” with a generous design that “perform as well as an existing local healthy ecosystem” (Project Positive). 

LIFE POSITIVE DESIGN 

LIFE POSITIVE DESIGN emerges as a universal design philosophy that puts the love of nature and the joyful pursuit of human well-being at the center of design decisions. It springboards from six equally important pillars: Humanity, Commerce, Circularity, Nature, Technology, and Art to deliver unique and enriching designs while nourishing the propensity of life to flourish in any specific context. A LIFE POSITIVE DESIGN is artfully communicated, functional, safe, sustainable, and beautiful to create conviviality and foster a meaningful re-connection with the place, the community, and among all living species, human and not. It recognizes that life is relational.

When applied to the retail industry, LIFE POSITIVE DESIGN expresses the uniqueness of a brand as a catalyst for human connections, synthesizing the joy of living within the beauty of nature in place, conveying it with art. This approach to retail is innovative and disruptive, and simultaneously timeless: inspiration from nature and love for all life has always been with us. It is now brought front and center while recognizing that profitability, differentiation, and operational excellence are still at the core. A LIFE POSITIVE DESIGN celebrates the joy of life-encompassing possibilities with beautiful solutions that springboard from and belong within the local, interwoven tapestry of life, while fostering flourishing prosperity that harmonizes with the context, in specificity. Revealing nature’s local significance responds to our longing for significant relationships, and projects us to a meaningful, regenerative, and profitable future of retail.

Let’s re-imagine retail, moving towards a new flourishing prosperity while offering new life-positive experiences!