Why offices are beginning to look like forests now

The modern office is starting to look more like a Rainforest Cafe than a place of business.Amazon.com Inc’s new

Seattle

headquarters has 40,000 plants. Down the coast, every other floor in Samsung’s twoand-a-half-year-old San Jose office space is a garden.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd

wants all employees in its Hangzhou workplace to be no more than a one-minute walk from an outdoor green space.


In a bid to keep workers happy, productive and, most important, in the office for as long as possible, companies have flocked to all sorts of design trends over the years. Last decade it was kegs and pingpong tables; now Mother Nature is in vogue.

The trend, called “biophilia”, is based on the idea that humans have an innate connection to nature. “We see it as returning to what our bodies and our brains need,” said Ryan Mullenix, a design partner at NBBJ, the architecture firm that worked on the new Amazon office.

Because the wilderness is our natural habitat, biophilia advocates say, we feel more at ease there than in a sterile office. Research has found that offices outfitted to look more like the natural world lead to happier, healthier and more productive employees. “When you look at a tree, you’re smarter,” explained

Daniel Skiffington

, a senior associate at NBBJ.

Another way to look at it: If we have to be stuck inside all day without a minute to go out and get some fresh air, why not make our time in the sterile office as pleasant as possible? Many people prefer daylight and plants to darkness and formica.

“Every day I wish for a small meteorite to crash through our building’s roof at night so we can get some sunlight in,” said Martin Bate, an analyst at BNSF Railway Co. Bate works in a converted factory with limited natural light. “We’re certainly not vampires, so why don’t we have windows?”

Creating a nature-infused workplace isn’t as simple as buying a few thousand ferns. In its new office,

North Carolina-based insurance brokerage Jackson Sumner & Associates installed View Dynamic Glass, a “smart” window that reduces glare and heat from the sunlight. No matter how bright or hot the sun shines, the company can keep the windows unobscured to let in natural light all day long.

Plant walls aren’t an uncommon site in offices these days. Some companies have even adjusted the air circulation in their workspaces to offset “volatile organic compounds” in the air.

Others, meanwhile, have expressed interest in having an on-site aviary, said NBBJ’s Mullenix.