Why Biophilic Design Has Moved From Architectural Trend to Leasing Strategy
For most of the last decade, biophilic design sat in the “nice to have” column of office planning: a living wall in the lobby, a few potted ferns near reception, maybe a skylight if the budget allowed. That framing is out of date. In a market where the best buildings are filling and commodity product keeps losing tenants, the way a space connects people to daylight, air, greenery, and natural materials has become part of how occupiers judge whether a building is worth the commute.
Biophilic design is the practice of building human connection to nature into the built environment. The underlying idea comes from biologist E.O. Wilson’s “biophilia” hypothesis, which holds that people have an innate affinity for living systems. For owners and tenants, the more practical question is simpler: does it measurably change how people feel and perform at work, and is it worth paying for?
What the Research Actually Shows
The evidence base is larger than most people assume, though it deserves careful reading. The most widely cited workplace study is the Human Spaces report, a 2015 survey of 7,600 office workers across 16 countries led by organizational psychologist Professor Sir Cary Cooper and commissioned by flooring manufacturer Interface. Workers in environments with natural elements such as greenery and sunlight reported 15% higher well-being, 6% higher productivity, and 15% higher creativity. The same survey found that 47% of workers had no natural light in their workspace and 58% had no live plants, and that a third of respondents said office design would affect their decision to join a company.
More recent peer-reviewed work adds nuance. A 2024 study in Scientific Reports surveyed more than 600 white-collar workers in open-plan offices and found that exposure to indoor natural elements was linked to higher job well-being, with the effect running through vigor, meaning the energy and resilience employees reported. The authors also found that individual workers’ personal connection to nature shaped how much they noticed and benefited from those elements. In other words, biophilic features are not a magic switch, but they do move the needle on how energized people feel at work.
The Economic Case Owners Should Understand
The strongest argument for biophilic design is not aesthetic. It is arithmetic. In its report The Economics of Biophilia, sustainability consultancy Terrapin Bright Green estimated that salaries account for roughly 90% of a typical office’s operating costs, against less than 1% for energy. A small percentage gain in productivity or attendance is therefore worth far more to an occupier than most efficiency upgrades.
The report compiles several data points worth noting. It cites University of Oregon research attributing about 10% of employee absences to architectural elements that fail to connect people with nature, with view quality as the main predictor. It describes a Sacramento case in which workstation changes giving employees better views cost roughly $1,000 per worker and returned about three times that amount annually through higher call-handling performance. And it draws on Roger Ulrich’s landmark 1984 hospital study, in which surgical patients with a window view of trees had shorter post-operative stays than those facing a brick wall.
Some of these studies are more than a decade old, and they measure different outcomes in different settings. But the direction of the findings is consistent, and the math is hard to ignore: when people costs dwarf occupancy costs, the environment people work in is a lever on the larger number.
The 14 Patterns: A Practical Framework
For owners and architects looking to move beyond plants on a shelf, Terrapin’s 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design is the most common reference framework. It organizes biophilic design into three categories:
- Nature in the Space: visual and non-visual connections with nature, non-rhythmic sensory stimuli, thermal and airflow variability, presence of water, dynamic and diffuse light, and connection with natural systems.
- Natural Analogues: biomorphic forms and patterns, material connection with nature, and complexity and order.
- Nature of the Space: prospect, refuge, mystery, and risk or peril.
The framework matters because it shows how much of biophilic design is about the building itself rather than décor. Daylight penetration, operable windows, views, ceiling height variation, natural materials, and spaces that offer both open outlooks and quiet retreats are all design decisions baked into floor plates and renovation scopes.
What It Looks Like in Chicago
Chicago already has high-profile examples. When Google converted a 1923 cold storage warehouse at 1000 West Fulton Market into roughly 237,000 square feet of offices, the design, as documented by Trellis, centered on a six-story atrium that pulls daylight to every floor, live plants, undulating walls, varied ceiling heights, and latticework partitions that create places of refuge. Nearby, M Moser Associates has described its Circadian Building at 1016-20 West Lake Street as a 115,000-square-foot project built around biophilic design and circadian lighting principles, targeting WELL Platinum certification.
These are showpieces, but the lesson applies well beyond Fulton Market. As we noted in our State of the Chicago Office Market for Q3 2026, the flight to quality is producing real rent growth in the corridors with strong workforces, including Lake County, the I-88 corridor, and the Northwest suburbs. Many suburban office parks already have assets urban towers would pay heavily for: mature trees, ponds, walking paths, and floor plates with abundant window lines. Owners who make those features visible and usable, through outdoor work areas, improved daylighting, and interiors that bring the landscape inside, are playing to a natural advantage.
Practical Steps for Owners and Occupiers
- Start with light and views. Glare control, lower interior partitions near windows, and circadian-tuned lighting often deliver more than any single decorative element.
- Activate the outdoors. Terraces, courtyards, and wooded grounds become amenities only when they have seating, power, Wi-Fi, and shade.
- Use natural materials deliberately. Wood, stone, and textured finishes in lobbies and shared spaces are relatively low-cost upgrades during a spec suite build-out.
- Plan for maintenance. Living walls and interior plantings require ongoing care budgets. A neglected green wall is worse than none.
- Measure the result. Track amenity usage, tenant satisfaction, and renewal outcomes so the investment can be evaluated like any other capital decision.
Biophilic design fits squarely within the broader shift toward the office as a hospitality product, a theme we explored in Are Office Employees The New Consumers? and in our look at whether owners should make their office buildings pet friendly. The common thread is that tenants are choosing buildings based on how the workday feels, not just on rate and square footage.
Final Thoughts
Biophilic design is no longer about adding greenery for its own sake. It is about using daylight, views, air, materials, and landscape to make a building one people actually want to come to. Whether you are repositioning a suburban office asset, planning a spec suite, or searching for office space in Chicagoland that will help attract and keep talent, Van Vlissingen and Co.’s commercial real estate agents and property management teams can help you identify the buildings and improvements that will pay off.
Van Vlissingen and Co. has been the Midwest’s oldest commercial real estate brokerage, development, and management firm since 1879, and today is independently ranked the #1 commercial real estate agency in Chicagoland, home to the #1 independently ranked agent, Gordon Lamphere, and the region’s #1 ranked commercial property management team. If you own, manage, or invest in energy-adjacent, mixed-use, or transit-oriented property across Lake County, the North Shore, the Northwest and O’Hare corridors, DuPage and the I-88 corridor, Will County, or southern Wisconsin’s Pleasant Prairie, Kenosha, and Racine markets, contact Van Vlissingen and Co. at 📞 847-634-2300 or 🌐 vvco.com. For a market-wide view of where these dynamics sit today, see our State of the Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate Market for Q3 2026.