Architectural Symbiosis (symBioLAB)

Emergence of new operating patterns as effect of a human-plant-building association

The majority of the world’s population lives today in urban areas and the trend is expected to rise over the next decades. At the same time, people spend most of their lives indoors, with strong impacts of the built environment on physiological and psychological well-being. While the positive effects of integrating natural elements in the built environment are well known, people-plant interactions and the effects of the integration of indoor green systems with building technologies are less studied.

This research aims to fill these knowledge gaps through a real-life experiment involving indoor office and lab spaces. The working hypothesis is that a Symbiotic association can be established between plant, man and building, and that the association is beneficial to all three symbionts.

symBioLAB is a multidisciplinary project that connects architects, building engineers, psychologists, plant scientists and microbiologists.