Chief Design Officer, INTERFACE INC
FloorDaily.net: Chip DeGrace Discusses a New Report about the Benefit of Biophilic Design
April 10, 2015—Chip DeGrace, Executive Creative Director with interface, and Kemp Harr, Publisher of Floor Focus Magazine, ...
About Chip Degrace
In a 2015 interview on FloorDaily.net, Chip DeGrace, then Executive Creative Director at Interface, discussed the company’s newly released report, “Human Spaces: The Global Impact of Biophilic Design in the Workplace.” DeGrace stated that the report, based on a survey of approximately 7,500 respondents across 16 countries, found that office workers expressed a preference for natural light, indoor plants, quiet and collaborative spaces, views of water, and colors such as greens and blues. He attributed to the research the claim that such biophilic elements can lead to higher productivity, creativity, and well-being, citing metrics of up to 15 percent more creativity, six percent more productivity, and 15 percent higher well-being. DeGrace noted that Interface produces biomimetic products and has researched how space can mimic nature to improve well-being. DeGrace said the report was developed with experts including Sir Kerry Cooper and Bill Browning, and that it provides designers with data and a vocabulary to justify biophilic design principles to clients. He mentioned that 47 percent of respondents indicated they would consider office design as a factor in choosing where to work. The report is hosted at humanspaces.com, a site powered by Interface that DeGrace described as inviting practitioners and customers to contribute to the conversation and apply biophilic design in practice.
Transcript (13 segments)
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Kim Parr0:01
Good morning, listen to floridaily.net. And I'm Kim Parr. This morning my guest is Chip DeGrace, who's executive creative director with Interface. Chip, how you doing?
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Chip Degrace0:13
I'm doing well, thanks very much.
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Kim Parr0:14
I want to talk to you about a new publication, a new report that Interface has just released. It's called Human Spaces: The Global Impact of Biophilic Design in the Workplace. We'll get to that in a minute. Just a quick background on you. You've been at Interface for 25 years, spent a good percentage of that on the Flor rug business, which most people know has opened over 20 stores across the U.S. But interestingly enough, you have an interior design background and worked for the environmentalists before you joined Interface, right?
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Chip Degrace0:49
That's true. I have an interior design background, which makes me extremely relevant in the business. I understand obviously what our customers are after, that is our specification customers and their ultimate customers, having been one myself. So yeah, I've been here 25 years and done a number of things from product development to branding to branded space and everything in between.
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Kim Parr1:07
I've got to talk a little bit real quick about the irony of doing this. I set this interview up with you today. You're in Atlanta, you're based in Chicago, but you have global responsibilities. In setting this up this morning, I called England. And yet what we're talking about is human nature's desire to be in somewhat of a Stone Age natural environment. So it's an interesting world we live in. Let's give a shout out real quick to Edward Wilson, who in 1984 coined this whole biophilic design name. He was a Harvard biologist and he wrote a book that talked about how humans really do thrive when they're in a natural environment, right?
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Chip Degrace1:52
Absolutely. It is the connection to nature that gives us a greater sense of well-being, reduces stress, keeps us healthier in general.
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Kim Parr2:01
I guess what we're here today to talk about is the report and how that actually goes some distance to prove that. Yeah, that's right. Just looking at this, and I'll let you go into some detail, but you talk about in this 48-page report, which I think is primarily written, the intended audience is for designers, so it gives them the ability to tell their client that if you want a more effective worker, these are the things we need to do: we need more natural light, we need more plants, we need to be looking out over water. So go into some detail if you would about the report.
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Chip Degrace2:30
Yeah, you know, Interface has been obviously interested in a natural model for some time. We have products that are biomimetic, that is they look and work like nature. The natural outgrowth of that, of course, is to think about space and how space itself can more mimic nature. And for the last few years, we've been researching and connecting with outside constituencies about the power of the natural model as it is applied to interior built space or architecture and built space. And truth, you know, it's nothing new. Many cultures have historically understood the power of natural views, natural analogs in the built space, natural light, water, plants, and so forth in built space. Japanese traditional architecture has that and so forth. But we forgot some of that as we've forgotten many things here in the industrialized society. So we connected with some experts globally to do some primary research about how human beings are actually affected by a more direct connection with nature in the built space. We connected with Sir Cary Cooper, who's in the UK, he's a leading expert on well-being and stress at work. His organization helped us put together this research, as well as Bill Browning who works for Terrapin Bright Green based in Manhattan. But Sir Cary Cooper put this research together. We researched a number of our constituencies around the globe, from Asia to Europe to the Americas, focusing mostly on the office worker, but obviously this has implications for other environments as well, healthcare most certainly, as well as education and other areas. The essence of it is that the respondents in general said that they would love to see things like natural light. I think natural light was number one. Indoor plants at some level were number two. Quiet working space, as well as more collaborative space, a blend of things, which is what you find in nature. Nature is not monolithic, it offers you options, as good interior space will. In some of the European countries, a view of the sea or view of water was something that they responded to, was number four I think on the overall list. And then a mixture of color. There's a lot of research and philosophies on color, but greens and blues rated high across the globe with folks in general as to helping them be creative, be stimulated, and reduce stress. So those are the sort of key metrics and the people who contributed to the core research. But the cool thing is that it's nice to talk about something called biophilia, which sounds a little fuzzy and a little soft-headed, but there are actual metrics that say that people heal faster when exposed to some of the things I just described. That in the office, there's greater productivity and creativity, as high as 15% more creative, 6% more productive, and 15% higher level of well-being. So there are actual metrics in both this report and in other reports that put actual ROI, return on investment, for an end-use customer paying attention to some of these things I've just described.
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Kim Parr5:14
Yeah, some people may wonder why Interface is at the core of doing research like this. I mean, one of your most recent and successful collections is called Human Nature, so you have been putting together collections that help to create an environment that's similar to what we're talking about here. I want to go back just real quick and say, to put this together, there were 7,500 people who responded to this research over 16 countries. That's correct, yeah. And so it's some great research, it's a global view, and it does give designers the facts and the data they need to be able to talk to their client and say, 'Hey, listen, if you want a more productive workspace, or if you want a more healing environmental healthcare space, we need to blend natural light, we need to have plants, we need to have more nature in the environment.' Right?
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Chip Degrace6:06
Yeah, I think it gives designers maybe a vocabulary, a little bit more organized structure to approach some things that come to them intuitively and some things they're doing already. It gives them some principles by which to work and maybe explain these principles to their customers. So it's a framework to again offer up how more natural elements affect humans and further how that actually affects productivity in the case of office workers, retention, getting people to work on time. A lot of respondents said that they, I think as much as 47% of the respondents said that they would use office design as one of the determinants as to where they would work. So there were really good numbers here for designers to use to justify things that again they may already be doing, but not under the header of biophilia and certainly not under the sort of umbrella of worker well-being, worker productivity that relates to nature and natural principles.
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Kim Parr7:00
Now if somebody wants to see this report, I think it is available online. Where do they find it?
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Chip Degrace7:07
humanspaces.com is the URL. And it's a fantastic site. It's powered by Interface, but it has a broad range of contributors. And hopefully the people that would go there would also contribute. Obviously this is a conversation. The report we're talking about is a moment in time. We hope that the practitioners of design and their customers will take this to heart and take it forward and contribute, let us know what they think and how it's working. And let's bring this topic to the fore. Let's bring this topic to actual practice and look to nature for some of the answers that we still certainly need, especially in the built environment.
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Kim Parr7:38
Chip, I got to compliment Interface for doing this. When you go to see this, there's no commercials for Interface here. This is just great information. So kudos to you for putting it together. Again, talking to Chip DeGrace, who's executive creative director at Interface, about this Human Spaces study. And you've been listening to Kim Parr on floridaily.net.