In these increasingly urban times, I wonder, Can urban residential design interventions create entertaining touch points between people and local ecologies? Can the window simultaneously serve as a façade, transition and refuge that generate a reciprocal relationship between human and ecological communities?



Using ecological functions and biophilic design principles as an analytical framework for bridging the threshold between landscape and interiors, this book explores the development of a modular window system for the home that will increase people’s sensorial experience of the natural world. Window 2.0 is about designing natural systems into home, heart and psyche.



This investigation looks to the window as an extended threshold of graduated ecological, cultural and phenomenological character. This research aims to reveal ecological processes by embracing nature not so much as a metaphor, but as a design partner and fellow creator. In this way, the window becomes the medium for a dialogue with ongoing processes and strives to achieve a

structural homeostasis between dynamic external and changing internal conditions.



I have synthesized and distilled this investigation of natural and cultural systems into a handful of conceptual tactics and biophilic design principles that provide a valuable blueprint for designing outside in. Taken as a whole, these insights are a productive philosophical engine that drives the formal characteristics and aesthetic attributes of a system that directs the eye toward the ecological spirit of a region.



1 Place a premium on intimacy

2 Build relationships

3 Think continuity

4 Stack your functions

5 Encourage discovery

6 Facilitate flow

7 Look beyond the surface