Biophilic Innovation: a strategy to improve student well-being

Well-being initiatives don't always have to involve yoga sessions or group meditations. Real and measurable change can actually start with more basic adjustments to environment.

By Samantha Newport.

Undergraduates' well-being can become affected by many factors, such as:

• Homesickness;

• feeling disconnected and anxious in attempts to fit in;

• struggling to manage new and different priorities/responsibilities;

• managing health issues or changes to health;

• an imbalance of time, money, or skills;

• pressures in social-life (or lack of);

• struggling to adapt to a new cultural environment;

• balancing the new demands of their course.

It may be easy to minimise these challenges as just some of the follies of growing-up and becoming independent. Or to even disregard them altogether due to the misconception that university can, and should only be, about excitement, making memories, and diving into new opportunities. However, it is important to recognise that for many, the reality of university life can be very different.

The sources of stress listed above, amongst others, can be incredibly overwhelming for first-year students, many of whom may be living on their own for the first time or have even travelled across the world to be there; leaving family, friends, and a whole life behind them. Therefore, we mustn't disregard the very real, difficult, and intimidating changes new university students have to navigate. Ignorance of these things, coupled with inadequate support has historically resulted in suicides (Taub & Thompson, 2013), with one student dying by suicide every four days in the UK (Top Universities, 2018); increased drop-out rates (Paddick, 2019), internet addiction (Lan et al., 2020), loneliness, stress, and burn-out (Medora & Woodward, 1986; Stoliker & Lafreniere, 2015), amongst other consequences.

Well-being initiatives don't always have to involve yoga sessions or group meditations. Real and measurable change can actually start with more basic adjustments, such as making simple and effective environmental adaptions and re-designing typical university campuses.

Therefore to boost student mental health as they adjust to their new lives, universities should consider integrating strategic aesthetics and amenities into their buildings so to promote harmony and increased brain-function with minimalised distractions; to prevent fatigue, headaches and promote well-being. James (1899/2008, in Scott et al., 2016) expressed concern about the educated classes becoming detached from nature due to modern living; explaining how people have become desensitised and disconnected from their naturalistic roots, which has had negative consequences on well-being. Research explains that we have an ecological unconscious; an interconnectedness between humans and nature (Roszack, 1992 in Scott et al., 2016), and that modern living hinders our conscious recognition of this connection. Suppression of which, by living in artificial habitats, damages our well-being and engenders a pathology within us (Aspinwall & Staudinger, 2003 in Scott et al., 2016).

The National Union of Students survey reported that one out of five students experience psychological problems whilst studying. Higher Education Statistics Agency also showed that one out of 15 undergraduates failed to complete their first-year. This could be linked to first-year student's sudden transition from home to an intensely contrived environment such as clinical halls of residence, seminar and lecture rooms with limited windows, restricted spaces, strip lights, and small reflections upon natural settings. Therefore environment may be a direct factor, impacting student well-being.

Universities would thus benefit from employing a biophilic initiative by redesigning its campus according to biophilic architecture, drawing principles from E. O. Wilson's biophilia hypothesis; that humans have an innate kinship with nature and thrive when existing within it. Therefore to improve first-year student's well-being, campus' could employ more organic/naturalistic designs in classrooms and halls of residence, by using organic materials in its interior aesthetics such as softer lighting, unrefined shapes, and naturalistic furnishings and imagery.

Maslow (1956) supported that environment has a direct impact on energy and well-being. Furthermore, research demonstrates that natural elements used indoors creates the same benefits as the outdoor environment, supporting the effectiveness of this initiative. The Human Spaces report (2014) supports this further, establishing that environments incorporating biophilic design incurred higher levels of well-being and a 13% productivity increase.

To complement this initiative, Universities could also use techniques of mindful contact with nature, with nature-centric designs around campus, wilderness and silent-area breaks for students during assessment periods, reflective rituals offered as video-tutorials on university student websites (providing student anonymity), and ecotherapy offered as a mental health service.

However, initiatives such as these could be expensive and may not be practical for all campuses due to location and space restrictions. Also, most biophilic research on well-being has focused on work-place offices, and so may not apply to University environments. Biophilia is also currently an under-researched area, thus any findings may be unreliable. Further study into this field would increase the validity of its application to universities.

In conclusion, well-being needs to be a primary concern of the UK government. First-year students deal with an abundance of stress and threats to their well-being as they adjust to their new lives. Therefore applied Well-being programmes need to be proactive and culture changing. In light of this, universities would further benefit from engaging first-year students in additional measures beyond biophilic innovation such as Mind-body therapy featuring silence, along with teaching students a three-tier coping strategy of single-tasking, optimism, and employment of a transactional model. These initiatives will be explored further in future articles that will be linked below in due course.

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