Biophilia and the Shape of Nature
Gary Shadforth
NMIT, Fairfield Campus, Melbourne
I am currently leaping into the world of landscape design after a career as a secondary school teacher for seventeen years. I taught maths and science with a particular interest and background in the biological sciences. I also have a long-standing interest in the preservation of the natural world and its wonderful complexity.
This led me to a six-year stint at the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne with their education service where my enthusiasm for plants, gardens and the natural world was further honed. I was fascinated at how garden spaces had such a positive effect on people and on how children respond in their learning. This motivated me to take up garden design as the next major phase of my professional life.
In 2008 I decided to set myself up as a ‘garden designer’ while I did further study for a Certificate IV in Landscape Design at NMIT. I feel that in focusing on sustainable landscape design I can be an important part in inspiring people to improve the beauty and amenity of their homes while living a bit more sustainably. I hope also to maintain the teacher in me and work with schools and their school grounds as well as communicating the interesting and amazing things about plants and gardens.
I am also very encouraged by the fact that many noted garden designers have lived and worked to very big ages. I hope to follow their example.
Design Explanation
Edward O. Wilson coined the word ‘Biophilia’ in response to an enduring emotional response he had to a natural landscape in South America. He defined Biophilia as ‘the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes’. He suggests that as a result of evolution from deep ancestry, our minds are inextricably connected and tuned to the complexities of nature. This includes an innate preference for particular environments. Those environments reflect where our species grew up – in the lightly wooded savannahs of East Africa, near flowing streams and fresh water lakes, near sheltered refuges of closed forest and sunny clearings, near a variety of food sources. Such idyllic scenes make on think of our great botanic gardens or golf courses.
The intention of this garden is explore the natural forms and spaces that strike a chord in how we feel and relate to a space or a landscape. The ‘Golden Spiral’, an organic form that appears to underlie a basic geometry of nature, exemplifies this. It has been suggested that the ‘Golden Rectangle’, which contains the spiral, is an ideal proportion that a number of artists and architects since the Renaissance believe is most aesthetically pleasing. Mathematicians have found the ratio reflected in many aspects of nature. Arrangements in pinecones, sunflowers and mollusc shells are some of the more commonly cited examples. Even in the broader universe, galaxies organise themselves in similar spiral arrangements.
In using this proportion in my design, I am exploring whether visitors feel it defines a space that is aesthetically pleasing, I am also using shapes that suggest our relationship to nature and the crucial aspects of it. The cycle of life – beginnings, movement, journeys, sustenance, security, reproduction, destinations, tranquility and death are represented here.
This garden represents an idyllic space; one that references mythical places such as the Garden of Eden, Arcadia, Elysium or Shangri-La. Places that cultures have considered that humanity came from or where we are destined to end up. These are notions and stories from great antiquity that seem to constitute a universal yearning, regardless of our culture.
We are all aware of the emotional impact that finding ourselves in a beautiful place can provide, whether it is stimulating or calming or exhilarating. It is now being recognised how more effectively people recover in hospitals when they can view some natural scenery from their beds. Natural places, even if contrived as a garden, really do have a tangible impact on us in a personal, emotional and physiological way.
This garden is a contemplation of that connection.
