050 FOCUS


Even with the most careful aftercare, not every hospitality project is suitable for natural planting. Architect Jana Schnappel Hamrová was approached to design a scheme for Soul Love Restaurant in Prague, where the owners wanted to refurbish with a bold, eye-catching design with a lot of greenery. She decided to create a jungle effect, but the lack of light in the historic building proved to be insurmountable. ‘In the end the plants had to be artificial,’ she said. ‘We intended to use real ones but all the specialists we talked to told us they would not survive long even if artificial daylight was used.’ She achieved her jungle look using huge canvasses of Amazon rainforests by Czech painter Otto Placht, high-quality artificial and dried plants and a lighting scheme that creates the illusion of sunlight shining through treetops in the jungle.


Above Where real sunlight isn’t possible, artificial plants and paintings paying homage can be used to mimic the impact of nature


Tere are options other than plants when it comes to successful biophilic design – many of the wellbeing benefits experienced by customers can be triggered in more subtle (and perhaps easier to maintain) ways, from using natural materials, textures and colours, to creating organic shapes and even simply hearing the sounds of running water, offering plenty of potential for architects and designers to tap into the experiential benefits even on smaller or tighter- budget projects.


For example, at Mama Sens, a new restaurant at Galeries Lafayette in Paris, architecture and design studio AW² provided the biophilic elements by commissioning a wooden ‘tree’ whose elongated branches spread across the ceiling into the four corners of the restaurant, bespoke furnishings made of bamboo and rattan, natural colours and dried herbs


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