How do you make a green environment for people to live in that is also integrated with nature?

That’s the question we ask at Caddis as we incorporate the principles of biodiversity in our design. Throughout our work, we affirm the belief that the human world and the natural world can and should be integrated – rather than designing so that housing is over here and nature over there. Biodiverse design highlights four principles: 1) encourage symbiosis between humans and the natural world; 2) de-emphasize the automobile; 3) create outdoor rooms; and 4) choreograph for contact. Read more about these principles in our blog post “Four Strategies for Biodiverse Design.” 

Designing to integrate the human world and the natural world is a much more pleasant way to live than the disconnect from nature that many people experience. And though it might seem unlikely at first, it turns out that this knitting together of the human and the natural is available in urban, suburban, and rural spaces alike. With this integration, residents get to experience seasonal changes, see different plants, feel different textures – in general have a wonderful connection with life around them. 

Bringing the outdoors into the human habitation space improves and enhances mental health and quality of life. We have found again and again throughout our work that breaking down artificial barriers between the human world and the natural world builds resiliency. Pollinators, plant species, and all abundance of natural life thrive – and so do the human occupants.

Above: The street-side front of a home at Wild Sage Cohousing in Boulder, Colorado.

Caddis’s involvement in this type of biodiverse design goes back to the early 2000s with the development of Wild Sage Cohousing (see below). We asked “What if Wild Sage were a food-bearing landscape?” That question shifted the conversation, and today edible plants are a big feature of community life. When we helped design Wild Sage, books such as E.O. Wilson’s Biophilia (1984) and Janine Benyus’s Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature (1997) had been published and were influential, but the incorporation of biodiversity principles in design was just getting underway. Since that time, there has been a real blossoming in the ways designers are thinking about these concepts.

Following are Caddis projects that incorporate principles of biodiverse design – both multifamily residential and single-family residential.

When designing multifamily residential projects, site-planning concepts are essential to the successful integration of biodiversity, human habitation, and the habitation of pollinators and plant species as well. 

The common green is a place people travel through. Because the cars are separate from the housing, residents walk through the site and interact with other community members organically. There’s always something happening. The comings and goings of the community’s residents create opportunities for casual and social interaction, positive moments of connection that are not contrived or planned in advance. Wild Sage also provides little spaces for children to inhabit, pockets that bring the kids into interaction with each other and with nature. The same principles apply to individual residences. Every unit has its own outdoor space. Porches and decks are sized to be useful, not token. Good “porchology” at Wild Sage is based on primary building setbacks that are only 15 feet, with 7 feet to the porches. This provides deeper porches that are recessed into the buildings. Elevating the porches and having good railings and depth are also important strategies for making these places livable. Wild Sage’s porches are inhabitable, and people use them a lot. Walk around Wild Sage, and you’ll see furniture and plants on porches, but more importantly you’ll see residents on their porches interacting with passersby. The layering of space from the private indoor space to the public outdoor space is achieved in large part through the plant life. In fact, the selection of plant species was central to the design of Wild Sage. The amount of solar exposure, water availability, and the groundwater conditions between buildings led to plant choices that were quite different from the native landscape of short-grass prairie; many of the plants that were chosen are edible. Sweet and sour cherries, plums, apples, peaches, gooseberries abound in this new urbanist neighborhood, and residents harvest food throughout the year and share jams, pies, and liqueurs with one another. Individual residents can intervene in the landscape as well by planting their own gardens, whether small and modest or large and lush.

A very small lawn in the common courtyard includes a sign reminding residents about pollinators as well as abundant, diverse planting. In fact, the space is so beautiful that visitors are quite taken with the great landscape experience. As with Wild Sage, Silver Sage was designed so that people get out of their houses, become involved with each other and with the landscape. We looked, for example, at the buildings that line the alley and thought about ways to activate the space. One of them became a potting shed, one is a bike shed, and one is a wood shop. Because these open onto the courtyard, everyone knows when something is happening in those spaces, and the creative energy is shared. Our goal was to line the common area with tons of activity and human-initiated interactions – and it worked!

Currently, Caddis is helping to design a new affordable housing project in Denver. Created by Jovial Concepts, The Co-op at 1st is a neighborhood space where training and community development are provided. A striking aspect of the Co-op at 1st Street is its green roof, which provides a gathering place for residents as well as a site to grow produce. The rooftop will be a wandering space where people can walk through and pause at places to sit, places to grow food, or places to just be together. 

Want to dig deeper into these concepts? Watch this video to learn why nature is good for your mental health. Then check out “Twenty Ideas for Integrating Biodiversity in Urban Planning and Development.”

Biodiversity in design reflects the real mutual support and interdependence of the natural world, and humans are a part of that natural world. We at Caddis believe and observe that there are mental health and ecological benefits from recognizing, uplifting, and designing for this interdependence. Our goal is to design with nature. It’s a different mindset: we’re here together with the bees and the birds and the squirrels. We’re all here together, and it’s great.