In Human Evolutionary terms, our industrial, technological, urban, built-environmental history is short....very, very short.
WHY?
We firmly believe in the power of biophilia and biophilic design. But some people ask WHY? Here's why...
Why Biophilia is
Biophilia is a human trait because our built-environment existence has been so small.
In human history, the time the majority of our species has spent in the urban landscape can only be traced back a couple of hundred years. Before that we lived in and with nature. Our brains have evolved for the vast majority of our existence within the natural world. They still respond to that world in all its complexity. From fractal patterns to the refuge of the cave. From the fight or flight response to the feel of earth, sand or grass under our feet or a breeze on our face.
In evolutionary terms, we are still in nature. Two hundred years is nowhere near enough time for our ancestral brain to develop strategies to cope with urban life. So, instead, it desperately wants to translate the urban to the natural. It's constantly looking for parallels between the built and the natural.
That is WHY biophilia is.