When it comes to hotel design, a few pot plants don’t cut it any more

Biophilic design is the new catchword in hospitality, where buildings overflow with plants and sunlight, turning them into jungles of vines, palms and water features.

Forget plush sofas, gilded mirrors and other artificial symbols of luxury and comfort; natural fabrics and materials, clustered vegetation and vertical gardens are the new luxury as architects weave the patterns and forms of nature into their designs, to strengthen guests’ connection to the natural world and sense of wellness.

The 1 Hotel group, which has 15 hotels (soon to be 20) in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific, is leading in terms of nature-based design and sustainability, with organic materials and greenery at the core of every hotel.

1 Hotels is a relatively new company, started by Barry Sternlicht, founder of Starwood Hotels and the buzzy W Hotels, who sees the new brand as a platform for change. “I wanted to capture the beauty of nature in a hotel and commit to safeguarding it as best as I can, a responsibility that I believe we all share,” he says.

The flagship hotel at Brooklyn Bridge opened in 2017. One of the latest additions is the new 1 Hotel Melbourne, which positions itself as a sustainable sanctuary with an indoor garden and plant-filled public spaces.

At 1 Hotel in Mayfair, London, instead of a ritzy chandelier in the lobby, there’s an amazing four-metre-diameter vegetal chandelier installation, Rainforest by Studio Patrick Nadeau, which is covered with 50,000 strands of Spanish moss.

I’ve just been in Singapore, where biophilia has really taken root, quite literally. Famously dubbed the “garden city” in the 1960s by the country’s founding father and former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, it’s long been a leading example of how greenery can be brilliantly integrated into urban spaces.

At Gardens by the Bay, landscape design includes lakes, two conservatories with separate biodomes and a forest of 18 Supertrees that serve as vertical gardens, observatories and engines for essential shading and water collection.

The Jewel at Changi airport is a shopping mall that houses 2000 trees and palms and 10,000 shrubs, a hedge maze and a rain vortex cascading seven storeys, the world’s tallest indoor waterfall.

At the Pan Pacific Orchard on Orchard Road, the impressive 23-storey tower has four separate climate zones – forest, beach, garden and cloud – with dense greenery settings, enormous plant-covered pillars and cascading water features.

And at the new Mandai Rainforest retreat by Banyan Tree, just 30 minutes from Singapore’s central business district, vines trail from platforms and balconies and greenery springs up in every passage and corner of the contemporary building. The plan is for the resort to entirely disappear into the rainforest as the plants grow.

While it’s common to be surrounded by plants at resorts in natural environments like tropical jungles or alpine forests, it’s city hotels that are really getting the green-up.

Some of the hotels in the 1 Hotel brand feature about 4000 plants. Clearly, a few hanging pot plants or rubber trees in pots won’t do any more.

This is part of a broader healthy building movement, which takes a holistic design approach, viewing the construction of a building and its inhabitants as deeply intertwined; human nature as well as plant nature.

It seems to me that this should be the most fundamental consideration of building design, but I think we’ve all seen buildings that have the opposite effect, ignoring the mental health aspects of existing in spaces unsympathetic to our innate biological connection with nature.

Brutalism appears to be in fashion again, but no matter how visually stunning those spaces are, they’re difficult to live in.

As the global population continues to urbanise, architects and designers are trying to figure out how people can reap the benefits of being in nature without going outside.

We’re lucky in Australia that even our biggest cities provide access to water, trees and natural light. But other urban environments are often land-locked concrete jungles.

The Japanese have always been respectful of the natural world, and even Tokyo, with its population of 37 million, can feel tranquil because of the access to Zen gardens and gorgeous interior tree plantings.

When we travel, we spend a lot of time in artificial environments – planes and airports, notably. Research shows that guests spend more time in biophilic hotel lobbies and rooms. It’s understandable that we would want to stay in a space that’s green and uplifting.

It’s a green revolution.