Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region

Biophilic Design is the subject of a workshop and conference at the France Design Week, 2025 edition, organized in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region. The event focuses on a useful and pragmatic approach to Biophilic Design — beyond the generic aesthetic discourses that currently saturate this field.

Biophilic Design, though rooted in an aesthetic and wellbeing approach to space, possesses tangible and measurable utility. It responds to identifiable needs: health, sustainability, energy efficiency, quality of life. In a context of growing urbanization and digitalization that exacerbates disconnection from nature, this design becomes an essential tool for transforming spaces into healthier, more sustainable, more future-adapted environments.

What Is Biophilic Design: Conceptual Clarification

The term “Biophilic Design” suffers from inflationary use. Any presence of a potted plant in an open-plan office can be called “biophilic design.” This dilution devalues the concept and prevents its serious application.

Biophilic Design, properly understood, is based on a scientific hypothesis: human beings have a biological need for connection with living nature. This need is not cultural or aesthetic. It is evolutionary — inscribed in the nervous system after hundreds of thousands of years of coevolution with natural environments. Depriving a human being of contact with nature has measurable physiological and psychological effects: stress, cognitive fatigue, reduced immunity, anxiety.

Biophilic Design responds to this need by structuring built environments that maintain and stimulate this connection. Not through superficial decoration, but through fundamental design decisions: light, materials, spatial organization, acoustic management, ventilation, visual connection with the exterior.

Pragmatic Approach: Applications and Results

The workshop explores concrete applications of Biophilic Design in different typologies: offices, residential, public spaces, healthcare environments. For each typology, the approach is the same: identify the specific needs of users, translate them into design decisions, measure results.

This pragmatic approach distinguishes the workshop from conferences that remain at the level of principles. Participants leave with operational tools, not just inspiration.

Workshop and conference on Biophilic Design — France Design Week 2025, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region.