You can listen to Episode S5E02 right here!
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Hello and welcome to the Third Age Design podcast where we do the legwork you get the edge. I’m Lori Pinkerton Rolet, and in these bleak days of winter, if you’re listening in the northern hemisphere that is, we’re going to celebrate nature in all of her magnificence in this episode, and in particular the impact of biophilia and biophilic design on wellbeing for seniors, and well, everyone. Our special guest today is Dr Vanessa, Champion, founder of ‘The Journal of Biophilic Design’. Our innovation spotlight this month shines on green care farms. Have you heard of these before? And are you intrigued? Instead of our usual inspirational quote to start with this month, it’s a poem from author Victoria Erickson, and it seems particularly appropriate for this episode: To be fed by wilderness is to desire nature so deeply you find bliss everywhere, every day, every hour, waiting, reaching for you. Let that sink in for a moment. But I think it’s beautiful, natural and totally fitting. The Third Age Design podcast is supported by Wissner-Bosserhoff. Elevate nursing care with intelligent beds from Wissner-Bosserhoff, blending modern, smart care technology with comfort, empowering caregivers worldwide. Discover more at www.wi-bo.com. Okay, let’s get started and examine the links between nature and well being, particularly for seniors. Our guest today is Dr Vanessa, Champion editor and founder of ‘The Journal of Biophilic Design,’ originally an academic at UCL in London, Ness has a PhD in Greek and Latin and also worked in the British Museum, honing her interest in research and how societies flourish. Also, how physical and visual environments inform our behaviors. After editing a London newspaper, she set up her own media company and consultancy working with clients in the United Kingdom, including the BBC. banks and the NHS. But it was after witnessing first-hand the biophilic healing effect of a natural view on a hospital recovery that she founded ‘The Journal of Biophilic Design.’ She shares interviews with thought leaders on how Biophilia supports well being for people, planet, and place. She’s a nature lover and professional photographer, and creates virtual nature walls for healthcare, third age spaces, schools, offices and private residences. She’s also the founder of the philanthropic media agency- Photo Aid Global Foundation, where her team supports NGOs and charities, as well as training local people in Africa, India, Nepal and elsewhere in media and storytelling skills. Ness, it’s a pleasure to have you on the podcast.
Dr. Vanessa Champion
Oh Lori, thank you so much for inviting me. Thrilled.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
There’s a theme that goes amongst all our guests, which is the people that know the most about any topic, always have a very broad biography, and I find that absolutely fascinating. But that’s not the topic that we’re going to discuss today. So let’s start at the beginning. What is your personal definition of biophilic design?
Dr. Vanessa Champion
Bio meaning life, and filio meaning sort of love or tendency towards, and it refers to our innate connection, our sort of vital connection, to nature, because we are nature, and we cut ourselves off from it, we get sick basically, or we don’t flourish. So it’s about bringing elements of nature and natural patterns, everything from like biomorphic forms to natural light, natural air, but sort of bringing the best of a good nature day, if you want, into the built environment. So it’s good for our well being, and it’s also good for the planet too.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
And I touched briefly on the introduction about what the journal offers. But could you give just a brief outline to people of what is involved and what they can find there.
Dr. Vanessa Champion
Yeah, fantastic. Thank you. Yeah, well, it comes out. So we got a printed and a digital journal, and people can subscribe to for just, you know, for what if you’re looking online all the back issues, but basically, we’re campaigning for biophilic design everywhere. So the journal itself is split into different sections. The front section has a different theme. Every issue, as I say, it comes out every other month. So the issue that where we’ve this come out now, is on childhood, the next one after that, which thank you, Lori, you’re contributing to as well, is third age. But we’ve had issues on workplace, healthcare, neurodiversity, well being, blue mind, you know, all sorts of aspects. And. We’ve got lighting and sound as well coming up so people can really learn. It’s like people have referred to as like an encyclopedia of biophilic design. So within the each issue that you have the theme, then you have the science behind biophilic design. So that’s where we explore research and evidence. Then there’s bits about plants and planting trees, all that kind of thing. Soil. There’s wellbeing. It was always a section on cities as well. So people can, you know, so we’re looking at that bigger picture, you know, we look at infrastructure as well. And we can create cities that are, you know, create community spaces and things that are safe, but a nature-based for well being of planet and people and the wildlife and everything else. So, yeah, it’s really broad, and it’s lots of collaboration. We’ve got membership thing, which also entitles people to access the event series that we’re doing this year, 2025, lots of collaborations, and it basically bringing everybody together.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
So it’s a hub. It’s, it’s, it’s a hub for information on biophilia. In the same way that third age design is a hub for information about design for the third age. It’s encompassing this broad look at a very specific topic and what might be involved with that. Now I heard you, or I should say, I read that it was what you were witnessing in hospital settings that sort of set you on this path. Was there a specific event or events that made the light bulb go off.
Dr. Vanessa Champion
Yeah, I mean, I was an artist. I mean, I sort of said to run a media company, but I was also a visual artist. So do you know just, just put that in your back pocket for the moment. But my dad had Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia. And good luck to my mom, really, she kept him at home as long as she could, until it got quite bad, and unfortunately, had to go into a home. The home itself was quite nice, you know, it was, it was sort of state run, but actually it was nice, but he spent his last days looking at ceiling tiles. And I’m thinking, you know, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that somebody with dementia his frame of reference. And actually, it sort of breaks my heart to think about it. Now, I get quite emotional about it, but I couldn’t control that. But as a visual artist, I’m thinking, well, surely you could put some pictures of leaves or, you know, like we’ve seen in like a dentist surgeries, even like, you know, clouds and all that kind of thing. But at the same time, my mum was rushed in during the flu epidemic, into a into an isolation unit. Basically they I was losing her, and then they got her stable and then she was basically on this in this room on her own, looking at a pin board and a dustbin and a clock, and then started to go slightly nuts. You know, you can imagine, it’s a white box. There was a window, to be fair, but it was looking at a brick wall. Every now and again, there’d be like a bird that would fly over, but that was it. But my mom was going started to get very anxious. Her anxiety was really high. Her cortisol levels, obviously were up. She had high blood pressure, and she started, she was not eating, she lost she was losing the will, and she was and I was losing her again. And I’m like, Oh, this is awful. So I took images of nature, and as I said, I’m an artist, and I print on this chemical-resistant metal, which is hyper-realistic, but it means you can blast it with chemicals. So the NHS didn’t have a leg to stand on to say you can’t bring these images.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Right, right, from a infection control standpoint. In other words, yeah, yeah, totally.
Dr. Vanessa Champion
So I basically brought two pictures in. One was a picture of a sea a water scape in mountains, and the other one was a tree scape with a pathway through. Just it was liking it just the thing I’m thinking, I’m thinking, I’m just bringing some beauty into this space, and I stuck it on top of the pinboard. And I kid you not, my mom started to and the only word I can use is, like, communing with a picture. She started looking at, I mean, she was like, all over the place, you know, she’s like, she was on speed or something. She wasn’t, you know, then she started to calm down, she started to focus. She started to smile. And she was saying, ‘oh, they’re so beautiful.’ And she was showing it to the doctors, and I’m like, well, there’s something in this. And I’d heard about the word biophilia, and you’d mentioned in the beginning that I’m a, I’m a classicist, so bio-life and philia meaning love, these Greek words. I’m like, oh, I know what that means. And I’ve always been a nature nut. I’ve always lived out, you know, I’ve lived as much like life outside and love nature. So it was resonated with me. And my mom used to be an ecologist. She loved nature. She wrote children’s books about introducing kids to nature. So she was really much in that space, because she got better and she walked out of there. I was like, my dad, unfortunately passed away, but I sort of vowed, there and then, that I wanted to find out more. So I started the podcast series, which, as you know me now, now reaches about 30,000 globally, and, um, and I, because I didn’t want to keep it to myself, having been an academic, I wanted to share it. Oh, yeah, this is great. I had to. It was well, compelled. So I started a podcast series, and then started the journal. But it was really that it was witnessing firsthand the difference that just a view of nature had. And then I went off to study or Ulrich’s work that you know the view of nature has, and it’s like having witnessed it firsthand. And then you see the evidence, and you think, why are we not doing this? And this is why I’m campaigning really passionately now, and sort of get trying to get myself in front of anybody who will listen. And, is this why you said you’ve got something coming up on the third age shortly. Is this why biophilic design is particularly important for senior living environments? Is it similar to the situation with your mother, where people may not necessarily be able to get out much? Is that the… That’s exactly it? Yeah, you know, and it’s okay putting them in these lovely environments that, you know, that are soft furnishings and all this kind of thing. But what can they see? Can they see something beautiful? Can they see plants in where they are? Can they see colorways? Can they see a view of nature? And I remember when we spoke Lori, and you said about, you know, people in Japan, where they orientate their the chairs facing out to the window, whereas we do it the other way around, we have the backs to the window, just stuff like that, you know. So it’s about raising awareness of what can we do in the space that we’ve got, and if we have that luxury of being able to install something better, then yeah, and third age is such an important thing. Is it? We’re aging in place now as well. We are an all an aging population, yes, after a certain age, why should we stop flourishing? Why should we put in but be put in white boxes and then sort of basically shoveled out and then into another box in the ground? You know, it’s like,
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
You’re not really living. Then you’re, you’re sort of waiting for your next medical appointment. That’s not, that’s not really how as human beings, we tend to relate with the rest of the world. Now, having said that we do relate to the world during our five senses, and last year, we did a series on the podcast on designing for all the senses, not just the visual senses. And I’m wondering if you could touch on the other four senses, sound, taste, touch and smell, as to how Biophilia might engage with those four senses, rather than just the obvious visual.
Dr. Vanessa Champion
Well, so I suppose maybe starting backwards. So smell, for instance, we can put lavender and all these beautiful scents that we know has a calming effect on our mind and on our on our brains. Also things like making sure that if you’ve got grass outside, or you’ve got planting outside, a window, open the windows to let the smell of the new cut grass or the ‘petrichor’, they call it, don’t they? When there’s when there’s when the rain has fallen on the earth. And we get that sort of smell that you can’t put your finger on, but it’s just so gorgeous things like that to remind us that there’s life and there’s living systems and living patterns. That’s basically what, what that’s really good for, even the smell of water, actually, which sounds a bit nuts, but you know, if you’ve got a water feature in the garden, you know if you can be able to get outside, or if you can bring them inside as well. There’s a there’s something about the negative ions in there that that’s really good for us. Touch… wooden doorknobs, for instance, are really amazing. And when I interviewed Dame Lori Lee of Maggie’s Cancer Care Centers, one of the things that’s outstanding, you know, that stood out to me was that people, if they’re going through chemo, sometimes, I don’t know if it was all the ways, the way, but their sense of touch is like heightened. So if they feel metal, it can make them go… so by just changing the materials that people are touching all the time, to have that, to have wooden doorknobs, for instance. Taste, I mean, you know, we’ve got urban farms and offices, but I mean, how lovely to have, like flavors that people can try when they’re, you know, they might bring a tray around even, you know, with all the herbs in to say, what do you fancy? What do you try? And then sort of stimulate the senses in that way. And obviously psycho-acoustics and sound and what that has on our brains. I mean, if you think about you go into any accident emergency, say, and it’s so cacophonous, and it’s not good for us. We can’t sleep. We know sleep is so imperative to our healing. And in, you know, third age environments, whatever they may look like, as you say that sound is so important, and they say that sound is one of the last things to go.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
I’m sure, I’m sure, of it. I was actually in a coma once, and I could hear everything. Everybody said, Could you really? I always wondered, you know, like, is that real that they say? And maybe if I, if I blink, if I try to blink or move my finger, they’ll know that I can hear them. But you can’t do that. And so sound is absolutely the last thing. And of course, sound itself can make us terribly anxious.
Dr. Vanessa Champion
Yes, yeah. So, yeah. I just want, I just wanted to add, actually, when my mom passed away, she was in a respiratory unit, and they said she only had hours in the end. She lasted five days. I mean, my mom was a fighter, you know, right till the end, but she was in a respiratory unit, and you could, you know, they’ve got their all this, those machines that help people breathe, yes, oh, noisy metal cabinets. I mean, come on, people, you know, put it on a cushion, or something, you know, or, or, why aren’t these people making like, you know, casings for them so they don’t make so much noise? Because my mum, who that at that point, her eyes were shut, although the lights were so bright, and everything else that was going on, I was taking her on these, on these beautiful meditations. And like you say, you weren’t sure. My friend, who was a, we used to be a death doula, and she said to me, look, ness, you know, be like a midwife. A midwife out gave me a purpose, actually, to be there. But I was saying about, you know, you’re sitting in a beautiful garden. I was taking her to her garden, all the nature and the plants and was trying to conjure smells and all this and arouse the senses in this meditation. And I kept repeating it as well. When this noise came on, I said, Oh, it’s the lawn mower in the neighbor’s garden. And my mum’s sort of smiled. I mean, it was so, yes, you can hear it. So sound is SO sound is so important, and we forget about it because we can’t see it, like you say, all these other things that we can’t really see we should be, you know, I mean, we can create these beautiful sensory experiences for people.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Absolutely. And talking about sensory, you were mentioning wood and doorknobs. Well, I mean, doorknobs specifically in care we can’t use because of manual dexterity, but the point is that if you look at chairs, and you’re looking, say, at armchairs, yes, people are putting their hands on them. There’s there are two advantages of using wooden arms. One is the fabric won’t stain, the second it from a you know, maintenance standpoint, but the other is people can feel the texture of the wood. So if you’re not using beech, but you’re using something such as oak or ash or something with a grain to it, there is still information being given to that person…even if they have dementia, they’re feeling a texture. So I think you raise a really, really good point there. I know that you are working with the Biophilic Institute of America. I’m just wondering if you found that certain countries, because you are international as well, certain countries seem to be more interested in this topic than others. I’m wondering what your experience is with that, and why you think that might be?
Dr. Vanessa Champion
That was a really interesting question, actually. So the Nordics obviously have got it, you know, like so Denmark and Sweden, they’re already in that space. I suppose, with hygge…Japan, they’re already got this nature connection, unless you’re in Tokyo. But even that, they’re trying to bring it in in some way. But I’m finding actually, there’s sort of like pockets of interest, and the people are desperate for more information on biophilic design, more trying to accelerate that, because they can see the difference. So we’ve like, in Turkey, for instance, Spain, Italy. So in Europe, China as well, actually. So there’s all these green cities. So I’m having people reach out from me to me from there, saying, or, you know, you know, obviously I can see who’s subscribing and all this kind of thing as well. But before the conference that we had, we had somebody from Iran reach out to me to say, look, you know, she was a woman on her own. She was creating these biophilic spaces. So, you know, I mean, there’s, there’s loads of interest in different places, Australia, I would say, is probably the next one to look at, because obviously, with all the forest fires and everything, they’re sort of desperate for cooling places that more naturally. So they, you know, they’re looking at passive houses and things. But Biophilia is growing over there, and biophilic design. So the Living Future Institute has been amazing, the living future Institute of Australia, or whatever their LFA, but I suppose, as well, countries that affected by climate change, you have people who are wanting to make spaces better, cities better as well. Because obviously biophilic design is, you know, you can implement that in cities, but also areas where you have, like, a mental health crisis and well being, where people are desperate to try and create this more nature connection. And maybe also countries that that have been affected by COVID, but also have recognized that nature connection really made a difference to their people.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
You mentioned cities, but if let’s look for seconds, specifically at interiors…you’ve had many guests on over the years. What would you say are the interior interventions which have perhaps had the greatest impact.
Dr. Vanessa Champion
so in terms of what people have done, you mean?
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Yes, where you thought, wow, this is this is shocking, and what a great idea that was.
Dr. Vanessa Champion
I mean, I’ve mentioned it a few times in different sort of interviews that I’ve had. But I suppose the thing that is kind of it’s lasted with me is the black and white building in London. It’s an office building, and it’s by Waugh Thistleton Architects. And I mean, on the outside of the building, they’ve got solar shading and that, but it’s a mass timber building, and it’s the it’s beautiful, to be fair, the sound when you go in, the acoustics is amazing. Even the lift is made of wood, you know, it’s kind of, it’s all got wood. It’s all wood. But it was a silent build. So from that perspective, it was, it was like, you know, there was less pollution as well, that when it there’s hardly any waste. The staff, you know, the people that were actually constructing it had a better environment. But what’s, what’s been left behind? You’ve got this, and what they call it, this the hydroscopic nature of wood, which means that there’s, like this sort of ambient feeling in, inside the space and because it takes, because it breathes, basically the wood is breathing, so it absorbs the moisture and it gives out moisture. So we don’t have those dry environments. So I’d say probably that, because it’s so full of wood, and that surprised me when I went to visit it, which you can do. You can go and have a coffee downstairs, and you can organize. You know, if you if designers are interested, they can book a tour, actually, to go around the building, but the smell of the wood as well. You know, the handles everything. It’s just, it’s a beautiful sensory experience,
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
And probably they’re less likely to get sick building syndrome as a result of it not being absolutely sealed tight.
Dr. Vanessa Champion
Yeah, and it’s not toxic, you know? So, yeah, you
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
mentioned the conference a moment ago, just to make sure everybody’s on the same page here. So the last quarter of 2024 you hosted the very first Biophilic Design Conference in London, England. I wasn’t, unfortunately, able to attend. But just wondering, did you find that all the attendees were very much on the same page, or were people going off in different tangents, like, did it run away with itself or, or was everyone headed in the same direction?
Dr. Vanessa Champion
Well, the conference itself was, was interdisciplinary. And Lori, thank you for speaking of here, you did a recorded message for us, which was, which was amazing. So it’s lovely to hear your voice and your perspective on third age as well, and your own personal perspective. But people were on the same page, and I think deliberately, I suppose it’s, maybe it’s my academic background, but my studies were interdisciplinary. And doing the journal, everything, I think the conference, because it was interdisciplinary. We started off in healthcare. We went through psychology, we went through psycho-acoustics. We went through ecology, future cities, finance, value… So we covered loads of different things, which meant that some people who might have been over here say were sort of brought into the whole conversation and felt that they had something valuable to say. The feedback I’ve had has been, has been overwhelming, to be fair. People are still saying they’re getting work out of it, or whatever. But they, I think, yes, they’re all on the same page. I think I’m kind of going off on a bit here, but yeah, they were all they were completely on the same page because they, I think they, you know, if they, most people, had a knowledge of biophilic design. And I think it’s also valuable to put something on for people who are experts in the space that can then learn from each other. So the conversations that we’re having in the networking area, and we could be in the Barbican Center as well, so people going outside into the conservatory area and being able to walk around and talk and learn, yeah, I think it was…it was very inspiring for everybody. And yeah, it was. it was a mix of interior designers and architects, as I say, town planners, financiers, researchers, yeah, it was. It was a kind of really lovely mix.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
This is a personal question, not even so much for the podcast, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Were there more architects or designers, which, because we always work together, yeah, but we are, by the nature of what we do, we’re hired separately. So you don’t know necessarily, when you’re starting a project, who’s taking this aspect on. I’m just curious, did you get more designers or architects, or do you know that?
Dr. Vanessa Champion
It was more or less an even split, actually. That’s great. I mean, I work, we work, you know, the British Institute of Interior Designers did a panel, and so obviously some of their designer people came, and also our database came. But, you know, we had the editor of the RIBA Journal, so that obviously architects came. So I was quite conscious to make sure we covered different aspects, so that people learnt from, you know, the sort of cross-disciplinary we had some big architectural practices come as well as small individual people, not small ones, you know what I mean, but sort of individual architects.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Smaller practices.
Dr. Vanessa Champion
That’s a better way of saying it. But also landscape architects and people who are in between, not sure, also artists and creators, you know, people that were using innovation, or were moss artists, or whatever they were that you know. So there was supply chain, there was there was all sorts of people.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
…and sharing information. So, if architects or designers are not yet fully on board with the impact of biophilic design on wellbeing, what would you say after the years of that you’ve been involved in? This would be the absolute minimum interventions that must be delivered into senior living environments. What would be the baseline of…’if you do nothing else, if you’re not being given this as a focus by your client, if it’s not a focus necessarily for your practice, even though it probably should be, you need to do these things at least.’ What would those? What would that list look like?
Dr. Vanessa Champion
So that would be nature views, whether that’s of direct view, ideally a direct view out of the window at as a beautiful nature garden, if that’s possible, at all possible. if not, then a view of nature actually in the room, in the space. Better acoustics, making sure that the sound is okay. If you can install some kind of like nature-scaping sound, I think, like bird song, I think would be amazing. Plants, obviously, you know, sort of having something alive in the room is great. Movement as well. Is really because if we think about some spaces, they’re just sitting there, or they’re lying there, they might not even have, you know, they might not want the tele TV on, but it’s like there’s no movement. So creating these non-rhythmic patterns. So if you can create shading, or some like a mobile of some, some kind, so there’s movement in there. And this is all a pattern of biophilic design. Softer furnishings, not just metal, like you said, you know, think about the natural materials. What can you replace? What’s manufactured, what’s been, kind of like, mass-produced that you can replace with a natural material, I think would be like, incredibly important. So moving plastics as much as you can and metal, and replacing it with sort of softer canvases and wood and that kind of thing. And obviously colorways as well, natural palettes as much as you can. I mean, it can be pinks as well, and blue.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
I was going to say natural palettes aren’t just green and brown, if you can find anything. And nature kind of tells you make some suggestions as to what looks good together, doesn’t it? Yeah.
Dr. Vanessa Champion
Exactly, I just, I suppose I would say gentler, softer, calmer, less noisy environments, not cattle pens
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Like that, like that. Here is your crystal ball moment Ness. In the next decade, or maybe even less than that, if biophilic design is fully embraced within the Third Age sector, how would senior living environments differ from how they are now, in your opinion.
Dr. Vanessa Champion
You know what they would look like spas. They would have that beautiful spa, like feeling, you know when you walk into a spa and it’s like you’ve got maybe soft lighting, there’s lovely soft furnishings. The textures is velvet. It feels very luxurious, and you feel valued. You don’t feel like you’re chucked, chucked on a heap. You feel beautiful. I think there’s such an such an important thing as you’re older, particularly older women, I think, but even older men, you know, but we, there’s we can easily lose our beauty, I think, because of what’s happening to us and the medical interventions that we need. I think, to ensure that the environments around us are beautiful. There’s plants, there’s trees outside, in the garden, people can go outside if they want to. There’s more freedom, you know, and they can see beautiful things. They can see flowers that uplift them. They can smell the roses, or they can imagine the smell of roses. If they have, they’ve lost their smell, and the soundscaping is beautiful. Yeah, they’re like hotels. I think, you know, they’re like a beautiful, a beautiful, beautiful spa hotel, again, not like cattle pens. They’re like spas.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
And the word that keeps coming into my mind as you’re talking is…cherished. It’s about feeling when you go to a spa, it kind of is a little bit about you, isn’t it? And it’s a little bit about, I’m being cosseted because I matter, and I’m, I’m cherishing myself, and the environment that I’m in is cherishing me as well.
Dr. Vanessa Champion
Absolutely, absolutely. And that will nourish, they will nourish the staff as well. You know, if they’re in an environment where and the families too. I mean, it goes without saying, the families that come in that they don’t feel… because it’s stressful, when you go into a some care home environments, you’re seeing all these blips and blobs and stuff, but they’re like is loads of plastic, and it feels unlike the home that maybe your grandmother or your mother is, or your grandfather or whatever has come from, and you feel sad for them, so the families feel sad. It’s a sad environment to go to, which is why I think some families then choose not to visit, because it upsets them. So you know…
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
And it’s not nice for the staff because they’re there. 24/7, would you rather be in a place where there’s natural daylight, et cetera, or would you rather be, as you said earlier, in a white box of some kind? It’s kind of a win win.
Dr. Vanessa Champion
It is. And they’re not cheap places either, are they? I mean, you think about the money that’s invested in them, whether it’s your private healthcare, you know your money goes into. It. You know, with money we’ve saved up at the end of our lives, we’re kind of like, well, you know, I want a nice environment, yeah, but if you’re in a, if you’re in a public space, you know, God help you, really. So, yeah, let’s just create spas, this great spas, and feel cherished when we get older. That would just be, that would be my crystal ball.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
I love that. Thank you. Dr Vanessa Champion, thank you for being on the podcast. And just to say, we will have links to ‘The Journal of Biophilic Design’ on the podcast page for this episode at Third Age Dot Design, as well as to some of the elements that Dr champion talked about throughout such as the Black and White Building in London and some of the other points that she raised, we will have that research on the page.
Dr. Vanessa Champion
Thanks so much.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Now we’re going to take the nature links out of care settings and onto the farm. Green Care Farms combine agricultural production with health-related social and educational services. Now these are primarily found in Europe, especially in the Netherlands, where they have over 1000, in Canada, the United States and Japan… usually supporting people with late stage dementia and for end-of-life care, the findings of a study published by the BMC Geriatrics shows that the end-of-life care for people with dementia on a Green Care Farm is experienced as person centered care and tailored, and the personal relationships between family health care givers and professional health care workers are particularly intensive in these facilities, and really give a great deal of reciprocal support. Now that’s something we don’t often talk about as a normal focus. The relationship is usually the healthcare worker and the resident, so I find that really interesting indeed. So what are Green Care Farms? Well, firstly, while they may have sat beneath your radar, they’ve really been around for several years now, and they combine agricultural activities with care services and enable clients to live independently for as long as possible. Now, it’s interesting that the model has extended from healthcare into people with psychiatric conditions, addiction, mental disabilities, and to children with autism. Importantly, the model is based on a small family type unit with integrated staff, much as we reviewed with the Hogeweyk Village in our January podcast. I encourage you to check out the research links we provided on the Third Age Design podcast page for this episode to look into this further and to see if the concept initiates creative alternative approaches within your own facility, or ones that you might develop in the future, we’re going to be covering this topic in greater detail soon. Our TAD International Events calendar is bursting with design and Senior Living events for 2025 planning a holiday. Why not see if there’s something in the vicinity to inspire before or after your downtime, or use it to pre-plan your professional highlights this year. I’m just going to mention a few listings now, and let’s really focus on the US for a moment. Environments for Aging is being held in Lexington, Kentucky from the 26th to the 29th of April. And then in June, the granddaddy of all commercial design NEOCON will be taking place in Chicago from the ninth to the 11th. And finally, The Dementia World Conference will take place in Boston, or, shall I say, ‘Baston’, in September, from the fifth to the seventh. As always, you’ll find more information and additional events from everywhere on the International Events page on our website at Third Age. Dot Design, and if you have an event you’d like to see added, just drop us a line through our contacts page. Thank you. To Today’s special guest, Dr Vanessa Champion. Wasn’t she awesome? To our sponsors, Wissner-Bosserhoff, elevate nursing care with intelligent beds from Wisner-Bosserhoff blending modern day, smart care technology with comfort and empowering caregivers worldwide. To our editor and producer, Mike Scales, to Valerie Adler of the right website for all the updates. To Peter Thorne, who composed our theme music and is playing the piano with Mary Blanchard on flute. And to you for listening. I’m Lori Pinkerton Rolet, and next month, we’re hoping to pull off something we’ve been attempting for at least two years now, a study of the design requirements for bariatric needs. I do hope you’ll join me.