Biophilic Approach to Design for Children

Abstract

Purpose In recent years, design approaches that offer sustainable solutions have been preferred widely. Although these sustainable design approaches provide solutions for physical context, they are not able to solve the problems on psychological side of this situation. These psychological problems have been observed both on adults and children. This research aims to examine the benefits of enabling children who spend their time in built environments to experience nature through Biophilic Design. Methodology 140 children between the ages of 3 and 5 from two different pre-school institutions participated in the study. Participation criteria were to be volunteer, a pre-school student, and accessible. The pictures drawn by the children in reply to the question ‘What is nature like?’ were analysed by using content analysis and cognitive mapping method. The data obtained from the study were analysed and the results were presented as median, mean values ± standard deviations (SD), numbers, and percentages. The compliance of the total score to normal distribution according to age and gender independent variables was examined by the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Non-parametric tests were used in the analysis, p