Humans have a basic need to belong to a community, to connect with other people, and to become a valuable member of a group (Fiske, 2004). Drawing on Fromm (1964/1976); Wilson (1984), and Kellert and Wilson (1993) used the term, biophilia to describe human innate affinity and interest in forging connections with the natural world. Some forms of human experiences in environments with biophilic elements and attributes can satisfy this need to connect, belong and derive psychological benefits (Clayton, 2003; Mayer et al., 2009). Kellert offers a classification of biophilic design as comprising of two dimensions (i.e., organic or naturalistic), six elements (e.g., environmental features, natural shapes, natural processes, etc.), and 70 attributes. This matrix of dimensions, elements, and attributes illustrates the practical application of biophilic design in the built environment to enhance human functioning by offering the means for human connections with nature (Kellert et al., 2008; Kellert and Calabrese, 2015).

When biophilic attributes are available in environments, the biophilic potentiality of human-nature interactions is unleashed and activated. In other words, the latent biological tendency that humans have to connect to nature is facilitated in built environments, such as university campuses, with biophilic elements and attributes. Thus, green campuses play a key role in perceived student restoration and quality of life (Hipp et al., 2016; Gulwadi et al., 2019). This paper explores how biophilic potentiality can be identified and nurtured in campus settings through the nuanced concept of student connectedness.

There are different approaches to connectedness to nature. Evolutionary explanations based on the biophilia hypothesis emphasized in this conceptual paper focus on the affective link and deep emotional connection with different elements of nature. Other approaches define nature connectedness as: nature relatedness, which comprises of an affective, cognitive, and physical connection to nature (e.g., Nisbet et al., 2009); environmental identity (e.g., Clayton, 2003), inclusion in nature (Schultz, 2002), ecological identity (Walton and Jones, 2018), and a sense of oneness with nature (Lengieza and Swim, 2021) among others. There is evidence that spending time in nature, engaging with nature directly and indirectly in a variety of forms (via walking in nature, nature-based tourism, living closer to nature, and immersive experiences provided by virtual reality), and a strong sense of nature connectedness positively affects well-being (Richardson et al., 2021).

As little as 10–20 min of time spent sitting or walking in nature shows a beneficial effect on college-aged adults’ mental health (Colding and Barthel, 2017) when compared with similar time spent outdoors in urbanized environments. Even though green campuses are aimed at student recruitment, the health-related benefits accrued through interactions with and within campus landscapes, especially in a post-pandemic world, are still poorly understood. Students are often unaware of the ecological importance of green spaces on their campuses (Speake et al., 2013) even though their choice of university critically depends upon perceptions and evaluation of outdoor spaces (Groen and White, 2003). Campuses offer unparalleled place-based learning which can be complemented by the potential for deep connections with, and use of their green spaces. To develop biophilic design on campuses, we must first conceptualize the mechanisms with which students perceive, experience, and connect emotionally to campus nature before we can identify what types of accessible and sustainable “doses” of nature elicit a positive impact on mental health (Meredith et al., 2020). We define connectedness as passive and active engagement with natural elements and attributes on campus and propose that these mechanisms facilitate student connectedness at multiple levels.

Connectedness to nature is significantly linked to both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being (Capaldi et al., 2015; Whitten et al., 2018). The hedonic approach defines well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance (e.g., focus on happiness) whereas the eudaimonic view focuses on individuals’ functioning, meaning, and self-realization. Studies suggest the well-functioning aspects of well-being (i.e., eudaimonic well-being) are more strongly associated with nature connectedness than those related to hedonic well-being (e.g., Howell et al., 2011; Capaldi et al., 2014). This is because eudaimonic and hedonic well-being tend to be associated with different motives, behaviors and experiences. Eudaimonic behaviors may lead to experiences of meaning making, elevating experiences and sense of connection with a greater whole (Henderson et al., 2013).

Positive exposure to nature at a local level within educational settings may eventually generate concern for abstract or global environmental issues, and students may be more likely to bring that experience into their later professional and private relationship to nature. Interconnectedness and dependence on nature could propel environmental conservation action (Restall and Conrad, 2015). Some people also identify themselves as part of nature and equal to other life forms (Clayton, 2003) which may also serve as motives for concern for environmental problems. Both connectedness and integration promote student satisfaction, academic success, and retention (Jorgenson et al., 2018) and can be fostered in higher education (Lankenau, 2018).

The recent COVID-19 pandemic disrupted human communities, social networks, and overall quality of life, creating a great need for restoration, self-regulation, and social contact. Individual-level connections with the soft characteristics of nature such as vegetation, pets or wild birds, might to some extent compensate for reduced post-pandemic connectedness among people returning to campus. During lockdown times, restorative needs can be met through direct (i.e., gardening) and indirect (i.e., view from window) engagement in nature (Soga et al., 2021; Theodorou et al., 2021). Other pandemics will happen in the future (IPBES, 2020; UNESCO, 2021; report on biodiversity and pandemics) pointing to a continued need to counter isolation and safeguard well-being through biophilic environments. The innate human need to connect to life, nature, and life-like processes (i.e., biophilia hypothesis proposed by Kellert and Wilson, 1993) and its repression during pandemic-induced confinement situations highlights two key findings: (1) that nature connectedness may be a key mediator in the relationship between nature engagement, QoL, and psychological well-being and; (2) a pressing need to develop strategies to translate what is innately healing to the design of campus settings.

Connectedness to nature is key in mediating the association between exposure to greenery and students’ well-being (Van den Bogerd et al., 2018), is positively related to self-reported and actual pro-environmental behavior (Mackay and Schmitt, 2019; Whitburn et al., 2020) and enhances a sense of belonging which is linked to student retention and success. Nature-connected people also empathize with non-human lives, show a low social dominance orientation, and are more likely to connect with other human beings and offer support to marginalized groups (Ng and Leung, 2021). Consequently, the significance of feeling connected with nature is important in enhancing psychological growth and involves more than just spending time in nature (Pritchard et al., 2020).

While the biophilic approach has been applied to understand how urban settings can help people with a ‘daily dose of nature’ (Beatley, 2010), it is challenging to apply biophilic principles to actual campus design and management (Abdelaal, 2019). A translational approach requires an adaptive pattern language (i.e., living patterns; Alexander et al., 1977; Kahn et al., 2010; Salingaros, 2017) to guide spatial design and planning. We propose a relational view of nature to acknowledge the multi-faceted impact of physical and spatial features of green campuses on health and well-being (Chan et al., 2018). Additionally, a lens of student connectedness helps identify mechanisms that better translate abstract biophilic attributes to concrete design application. Student connectedness on green campuses can be explored at three levels—connectedness to nature, to other people, and to one’s self—to help build an explanatory path between campus features, good health, and QoL.

This conceptual paper provides a knowledge basis to frame, understand, and promote biophilic design and nature-based interventions on campuses by:

Campuses are social–ecological systems to the extent that they can offer a context and new opportunities for people to connect to nature. Addressing the dynamic and diverse physical and functional relationship between the campus and the use of its spaces by students, educators, and staff through this framework can help university stakeholders to first understand the campus potential and then improve the design decisions they make.

In this conceptual framework, university students of different backgrounds and with different restorative needs (S) encounter natural elements and attributes configured according to biophilic patterns on campuses. During these everyday encounters, students experience these biophilic patterns (e.g., A, B, C) through direct (e.g., sitting on a bench and viewing a water feature), indirect (e.g., gazing at a view outside a classroom window), or place-based (e.g., walking through campus) experiences. When biophilic patterns are perceived as affordances, that is, having the potential for health-promoting activities and interactions, students experience either connectedness with nature (1), with others (2), and/or with themselves (3). These everyday connections can further enhance their sense of well-being and quality of life. This everyday, dynamic process can also vary according to the needs of the student, recognition of affordances offered by the biophilic campus patterns, the mechanism of interaction, and the type of connectedness achieved.

Connectedness to nature is closely linked to people’s QoL (Olivos and Clayton, 2017). The World Health Organization (WHO) defines QoL as an individual’s perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards, and concerns. It is a broad ranging concept affected in a complex way by the person’s physical health, psychological state, level of independence, social relationships, personal beliefs and their relationship to salient features of the environment (WHO, 1997).

QoL varies with the cultural context and value systems in which individuals live, and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards, and concerns. Students’ use of campus green spaces is related to perceptions of QoL (McFarland et al., 2008). A relational concept of QoL and well-being emphasizes a multidimensional, needs-based approach that involves the satisfaction of both material and less tangible needs, and explores students’ connection with specific qualities and attributes of the campus environment.

In a relational view of QoL, individuals, groups, social and physical settings are seen in a state of constant change. Qualities often change with people’s experiences of place and also with the consequences of their direct and indirect contact with it. Alexander (1979, p. 19) proposed that “there is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man (sic), a town, a building, or a wilderness, it is objective and precise, but it cannot be named” and embodies a “freedom from inner contradictions.” He offers different enduring spatial patterns that translate how this quality can be achieved (Alexander et al., 1977). Recasting Alexander’s notion of “quality without a name” with that of “quality with many names” helps understand and situate students’ connectedness and varied experiences in campus settings. For campus design interventions, we limit this discussion to the study of nature and outdoor spaces and specify the “qualities” by considering them as “affordances” (Gibson, 1979) or potentialities of action that are provided by campus nature both in tangible and more experiential terms (Alves, 2018). Affordances are relational and processual in character (Heras-Escribano and De Pinedo-García, 2018) and help designers and researchers in translation. Our premise is that a sense of connection (with nature, others, and one’s self) will enable people to be the best version of themselves and reach their full potential (Kaplan and Kaplan, 2008). Campus affordances must therefore support students to reach their full potential. By tapping into their range of experiences and need for connectedness, we can begin to qualify QoL with different names in tangible ways.

Connectedness to nature is a relational process that refers to people’s identification with the natural world and the relationships they establish with it (Restall and Conrad, 2015). Connectedness viewed as a “transaction” (Dewey and Bentley, 1989/1949) explicitly links perception and action similar to Gibson’s notion of affordances (Gibson, 1979). Recognizing affordances depends on people’s characteristics, cultural context, and experiences. Educational settings and campuses are social-ecological systems in which people’s transactions with green spaces can be analyzed in terms of connectedness (Heymans et al., 2019).

Kellert’s (2005) biophilic design principles include three strategies for connectedness: direct contact with nature, indirect/symbolic contact with nature, and experiences of space and place—that relate humans and the built environment or landscape within a specific cultural context, and can activate people’s biophilia. A framework of six biophilic design elements (environmental features; natural shape and forms; natural patterns and processes; light and space; place-based relationships and evolved human-nature relationships) are embedded in more than 70 biophilic design attributes (Kellert, 2012) and have been further revised and simplified (see Kellert and Calabrese, 2015). This framework is supported by study findings in different disciplines (Browning et al., 2014), but so far has not been related comprehensively to campus settings.

Biophilic design is not merely about introducing trees and vegetation (e.g., green roofs, green walls, water sensitive urban design) into built settings—it consists of eliciting biophilic responses such as restorative moments (Gifford and McGunn, 2012; Gillis and Gatersleben, 2015) as part of the overall built environment experience. We propose that direct, indirect, and place-based experiences (the basic tenets of biophilic design) on campuses can lead to connectedness—to the place/campus, to other people, and to one’s self. Biophilic design attributes can also be considered as “histories of connection” which encompass individuals, the environment, and others (Ingold, 2011). Thereby, activities in natural environments involve a “loop of information” where tasks, tangible, and intangible dimensions intermingle. Activities are not undertaken against the backdrop of the built environment, they are imbued in the environment itself—“the environment is a world that continually unfolds in relation to the beings that make a living” (Ingold, 2011, p. 30).

Perceived environmental affordances on campus settings are actualized by people’s embodied acts, such as walking, looking, smelling, hearing, etc. People create sensorial links to the immediate environment through “histories of connections” that sustain a high QoL. Through the lens of connectedness, student’s experiences and actions in campus settings are categorized as:

(1) Connectedness to nature: how students relate to specific environmental attributes on campus; that is, how they move on campus, and what they see, hear, smell, and touch.

(2) Connectedness to others: how students connect with others and use campus spaces for gathering through shared activities.

(3) Connectedness to themselves (in nature): how students rest, find respite, inward focus, and achieve restoration and self-regulation while relating to nature in both direct and indirect ways.

Using these three levels, we will review biophilic patterns, attributes, and their qualities associated with students’ experience and use of diverse configurations of green and open spaces in campus settings.

Biophilia is rooted in an inherent need for connectedness, and is activated through affordances for connectedness expressed through a pattern language for campus settings. The connectedness processes (outlined in our diagram) demonstrate how green/open spaces influence students’ QoL in its different dimensions, and contribute to fill the missing link between design and policies for the promotion of green university campuses. Connectedness is used as a guiding relational concept (Chan et al., 2018) to link everyday campus experience to students’ QoL.

Our conceptual framework aligns with previous efforts to show how students can connect to nature in campus settings by activating three levels of biophilic integration: indirect, incidental, and intentional (Abdelaal, 2019) and how such engagements result in restorative experiences (Gulwadi et al., 2019). Design elements and open space assessments in campus settings are often discussed broadly without clear links to the concept of connectedness (Lau et al., 2014). Our framework shows connectedness can be promoted in campus settings via direct, indirect, and place-based experiences of nature. Current university agendas treat the student as a consumer but a more relational view can account for core dimensions of human experience such as connectedness (Baumeister and Leary, 1995). Connection with campus nature is critically important to human health and well-being, especially in periods of lockdown, such as the COVID-19 pandemic that led to great isolation and separated students from their established social networks.

University campuses can also engage in environmental sustainability and innovation (Beynaghi et al., 2016) in addition to promoting students’ health and QoL. The diverse meanings of a campus, can be promoted through place-based education. In line with biophilic principles, place-based learning fosters connections with the local environment transforming placeless academic education from abstracted knowledge to learning ‘as a way of connecting’ (to environments, others, and self). We envision campus settings as niches for connectedness through the activation of biophilic potentialities and campus affordances. The proposed framework in this study articulates QoL in terms of enhanced connectedness to pose the following questions: What kinds of nature would be desirable on a campus setting with student-specific QoL in mind? What are the practical insights to enhance students’ connectedness?

This framework contributes to further nature-based campus interventions. Interventions should focus both on changing the environment and on designing social systems that lead to greater connectedness. The design of social systems is crucial to accommodate a heterogeneous system of open spaces and to foster civic stewardship (especially during times of crises). Our framework highlights three connectedness dimensions and points to design patterns that support this basic affiliative motive. Future biophilic-inspired research and design should thus take these three dimensions of connectedness into account as they are evolutionarily functional and thus, promote students’ QoL, health, and well-being.

SA contributed to the conception and first draft of the manuscript. GB and PN wrote sections of the manuscript. All authors contributed to manuscript revision, read, and approved the submitted version.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.