In this article, we turn to Edward O. Wilson’s Biophilia (1984) to argue that biophilic design is central to landscape architecture, yet not as the imitation of natural forms, which has become common in architecture, but in the deeper sense Wilson describes as the “innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes”. Throughout the book, he reflects on the unfortunate gap between nature and culture. He says “unique operations of the brain are the result of natural selection operating through the filter of culture”, which has “suspended us between the two antipodal ideals of nature and machine, forest and city, the natural and the artifactual, relentlessly seeking, an equilibrium not of this world”. Wilson is criticising our habit of eradicating nature only to recreate it as a complete replica. Such replicas are inevitably thin: “artifacts are incomparably poorer than the life they are designed to mimic”. They offer only a mirror of a living world, and when recast, these constructed versions “fold inwardly over and over, losing detail at each translation, shrinking with each cycle, finally merging into the lifeless facade of which they are composed”.

Wilson’s conservation ethic operates on the scale of evolutionary time. Millions of years of adaptation sit in contrast to wars, economic or political crises, which, serious as they are, can be repaired within a few (human) generations. What cannot be recovered so easily is the process “that will take millions of years to correct: the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats”. Edward O. Wilson (1929–2021), a biologist specialising in entomology and evolutionary biology, was instrumental in securing protection for vast areas of the Amazon rainforests. His ability to bring scientific thinking into public reach, often by weaving it together with art, philosophy, and natural history, made him one of the most widely read authors in his field. Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life (2016), completing a trilogy with The Social Conquest of Earth (2012) and The Meaning of Human Existence (2014), has already influenced numerous projects, including Liam Young’s Planet City. And while almost any sentence from Biophilia could serve as a guiding thread, this one is a fitting close to the introduction: “lawn grass, potted plants, caged parakeets, puppies, and rubber snakes are not enough”.

Without much critical reflection, biophilic design is often reduced to the idea of bringing nature closer to people in built environments: green walls, green roofs, aquaponics, and similar features. These additions can carry significant material and maintenance burdens for the environment, or, more simply, become formal gestures that mimic organic shapes without engaging with ecological processes. A quick search for “biophilic architecture” returns Bosco Verticale, airport gardens, and other high-end, enclosed environments that raise little concern about the very ecosystems whose organisms they display, often extracted, transported, or grown in vitro. In this sense, the prefix –bio, which denotes life, has been objectified into consumerist logics and redeployed as a convenient greenwashing device.

The plants in Bosco Verticale sit in reinforced concrete basins lined with a “bituminous waterproof layer and anti-root polyethylene sheath”, each anchored within welded steel frames and secured with fastening devices to prevent falls. The system is irrigated with reclaimed greywater, the towers accommodate around 1,600 non-human residents, and instead of suspended window cleaners, the trees are tended by specialised “flying gardeners”. Yet the project’s environmental return remains modest: its annual carbon sequestration roughly equals the emissions of a single average household, indirect emissions included. Scaled to the building’s 300 apartments, we would need 300 equivalents of Bosco Verticale to offset the consumption associated with its residents, not to mention the consumption of the energy and resources needed for construction. Taken literally, each person would need to be “owning” (to) a green asset the size of a Bosco Verticale simply to reach parity—an equation that sits uncomfortably close to a market logic in which large corporations can purchase their way out of pollution and extraction in the name of growing our current standards.

If biophilia is rendered as the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes, or, in its Old Greek root, simply as the “love of life”, then biophilic design should foremost concern itself with nature conservation on and off-site, it should seek to build in ways that impose no cost on the environment, and then turn to the task of creating and sustaining (urban) ecosystems that can stir our evolutionary curiosity, evoke a sense of adventure, and foster a genuine interest in the discovery of nature.

“Is it possible that humanity will love life enough to save it?”

Very few projects in our selection state are using biophilic design as their guiding premise. Designers tend to invoke biophilia through design language, planting for well-being, blurring the indoors and outdoors, or gestures toward ecological resilience.

Many landscape architecture projects, however, practice biophilic principles without announcing them. The term itself has been appropriated, and it is losing its conceptual strength against measurable biodiversity. The tools of biophilia are not primarily those of design, but those of respecting life and life-sustaining systems above all. In this respect, landscape architecture is the profession that operates in this realm without needing to defend the greenwashing tools it is using, nor the bluff; on the contrary, it could quite well sell them better.

The core question biophilia poses for design is simple: does an intervention support life and the processes that sustain it, or does it erode them? Recent events offer little reassurance. The COP30 summit, for instance, enabled the construction of a four-lane highway, Avenida Liberdade, through the partly protected robust city forest, so that delegates could reach the venue more quickly. Such decisions reveal how readily convenience is privileged over ecological integrity, even in contexts ostensibly dedicated to environmental action. Building at no cost to life should be a baseline.

Planning frameworks that secure large, continuous habitats and rebuild ecological connectivity are essential. The UK’s Biodiversity Net Gain policy, requiring a ten per cent improvement in biodiversity for new developments, signals a shift in this direction. Emerging policies, such as Digital Product Passports, may limit the distant consequences of our material choices. Yet these mechanisms will matter only if they alter practice rather than accompany it as procedural décor. Biophilia, understood as a commitment to life rather than an aesthetic category, urges a more demanding design culture, one that recognises that every intervention has a footprint, and that the measure of our work is not the nature we represent, but the nature we enable to persist.