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Five Timber Office Designs Reducing Stress in the American Workplace

Stress is one of the biggest causes of health problemsresponsible for symptoms from difficulty focusing to severe anxiety—and it’s costing American firms more than $300 billion a year. To combat this issue, companies are hiring design teams to transform the workplace into a stress-reducing environment using biophilic design principles. 

Biophilic design involves the inclusion of natural elements into indoor spaces: views of nature, sunlight, plants, water and natural materials like wood. According to a recent report from Terrapin Bright Green, when wood is left exposed in building interiors, it can lower stress, improve occupant perceptions of comfort, and even lower blood pressure.

Whether you’re a commercial building designer aiming to enhance the occupant experience—or a company looking to increase employee wellness—you won’t want to miss these five projects revolutionizing the 21st-century office with their innovative use of biophilic design.

How Can Wood Boost Biophilic Benefits in the Built Environment?

Humans’ innate appreciation for nature—and natural materials like wood—is a phenomenon known as biophilia.

Seeing the Forest for the Trees. 

Color, collinear lines, and contours are the three main visual characteristics that have been linked to why many of us may tend to have a preference for wood.

A study of respiratory response and heart rate among participants who slept in a bed made of fragrant stone pine (Pinus pinea) showed significant physiological improvements.

In a blindfolded experiment, participants placed their palm on a panel of stainless steel, tile, marble, or white oak; touching the oak panel was correlated with the parasympathetic (rest and calming) portion of the nervous system.

ZGF Architects

Google’s Spruce Goose Los Angeles, CA

Historic Timber Hangar Becomes Nature-Inspired Workplace

In L.A.’s Playa Vista neighborhood, Google has transformed a historic timber hangar through adaptive reuse and biophilic design, providing 1,000 employees with a unique, open-plan work environment. The 450,000-square-foot, four-level timber hangar—named “Spruce Goose” after the Howard Hughes plane it once housed) incorporates a variety of nature-inspired design elementscreating an inviting and awe-inspiring office for the high-tech juggernaut.

Open floor plates, set back 20 feet from both the interior envelope and the central timber spine, offer workers vast longitudinal vistas of the facility’s biomorphic forms. A series of curved ribs reconstructed from the hangar’s salvaged wood support the ceiling, and the remaining smaller pieces have been used to construct furniture throughout. Spruce Goose’s interior makes the most of wood’s warm color, collinear lines, and contours, elements that are complemented by greenery and an abundance of natural sunlight. Inside, the landscape design includes lush, mature palm groves with custom-designed planters, irrigation, and grow lights.

Spruce Goose
Photo credit: Google Images by Connie Zhou
Spruce Goose
Photo Credit: Google Images by Connie Zhou
The landscape design employs biophilic design with lushly planted groves for the interior employee amenity spaces. The exterior site utilizes the phytoremediation planting of hybrid Poplar trees to stitch together the Google Playa Vista campus and bring a fresh perspective to workplace design.
Atlas Lab

Eight artists were commissioned to create large-scale original works inspired by naturesuch as a multi-story cloudscape by Hueman containing folds of fabric that are reminiscent of the red hues of a California sunset and a perceptual sculpture by Michael Murphy that evokes a rain shower.

Spruce Goose
Photo Credit: Google Images by Connie Zhou

William McDonough + Partners

HITT Co|Lab Falls Church, VA

State-of-the-Art Materials Lab Boosts Indoor Health

A Virginia-based state-of-the-art materials lab with a focus on healthy, red-list-free material selection through Cradle to Cradle Certified®, Health Product Declaration, Forest Stewardship Council and Declare, is providing its employees with a calming work environment while meeting some of the most rigorous environmentally sustainable building standards in the industry. The two-floor, 8,650-square-foot facility is LEED v4 Platinum certified and targets the International Living Future Institute’s (ILFI) Petal and Net Zero Energy certifications. 

Upon entering the building, employees and visitors are greeted by a large-scale living wall. Interior biophilic elements—unique for a testing facility of this kind—include an abundance of sunlight, an exposed cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glulam structure, and a natural color palette for carpet, furniture and soft furnishings. Renewable energy from the facility’s solar array provides cost-effective, year-round hot water and heating for all of the lab’s service bays and testing areas.

HITT Co|Lab
Photo Credit: © John Cole
HITT Co|Lab
Photo Credit: © John Cole

Hacker Architects

Field Office Portland, OR

Office Blurs the Line Between Indoors and Outdoors

A workplace where inside can be outside, and outside ventures inthat’s the vision behind Hacker Architects’ 300,000 square-foot Field Office, which serves as the Portland-based design firm’s creative workspace. Despite its busy, urban locale, the office affords  myriad opportunities to connect and commune with nature. 

The facility’s workspaces and lush landscaping are woven together seamlessly. Foliage-rich terraces are equipped with work surfaces that house power to support productivity, while plants shelter these spaces, giving employees a tangible connection to the natural environment.

Field Office
Photo Credit: KuDa Photography
Tom Cody
Managing Partner
Field Office
Why, when you go to work, should you feel like you're hermetically sealed from nature?
Field Office
Photo Credit: KuDa Photography

A combination of reclaimed and sustainably-certified wood adds warmth and human-scale texture to the interior; living walls and indoor landscaping, an interior plant and succulent garden, and outdoor park-like sanctuaries provide a biophilic backdrop for social functions and private reflection. Outdoors, a large green roof accommodates 4 “sky parks” with sweeping views of the city and nearby Forest Park.

Field Office
Photo Credit: KuDa Photography

Graham Baba Architects

Washington Fruit & Produce Company Yakima, WA

Biophilic Refuge for a Bustling Agricultural Enterprise

Abundant use of wood, warm materials, organic forms, natural light, and protection from a nearby freeway were the primary features that the Washington Fruit & Produce Company requested for the design of their new commercial office.  Surrounded by sustainably cultivated farmland, a headquarters featuring biophilic design was a natural choice for the Yakima, WA-based company.

Washington Fruit & Produce Company
Photo Credit: Kevin Scott
Washington Fruit & Produce Company
Photo Credit: Kevin Scott
The approach for the new office was to create an inwardly focused oasis. The building is surrounded by earth berms and a site wall placed so that views out are directed upward toward the basalt hills and the foreground of freeways and industrial agribusiness are obscured.
Graham Baba Architects

The building includes exposed timber framing with glulam columns that are pitched and rotated a quarter turn, giving the light-filled, open-plan office an oblique roofline that disappears into the surrounding landscape.

Centered around a courtyard of native plants, the office complex provides occupants with a refuge from the noise and activity of nearby industrial processing yards. Expansive glazing and operable large-scale glass doors make for a seamless transition between indoor and outdoor spaces.

Washington Fruit & Produce Company
Photo Credit: Kevin Scott

Gensler

United Technologies Digital Accelerator Brooklyn, NY

Nature and Tech Fuse in Brooklyn Office

Brooklyn may not be the first setting that comes to mind for a nature-inspired office design, but when a one-hundred-year-old tech company launched an office for their Digital Accelerator, they fused old and new, nature and technology, wood and greenery to create a natural urban oasis. The resulting 67,000-square-foot project reimagines a heavy timber warehouse as an office of the future. 

United Technologies Digital Accelerator
Photo Credit: © Garrett Rowland, courtesy of Gensler

Designed as an extension of the nearby Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Digital Accelerator provides employees with an environment rich in sensory experiences, complete with original pine columns, living walls, and overhead wooden planters exploding with ferns. 

A three-level bleacher and canteen space—dubbed “The Park”—and expansive timber tables encourage employees to gather for meetings and collaboration. Other biophilic design elements include wood-slatted ceilings, natural textured stonework, an abundance of natural light, and views of the Brooklyn Bridge and East River.

United Technologies Digital Accelerator
Photo Credit: © Garrett Rowland, courtesy of Gensler

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