Rita Berto

• Psychologist-Ph.D. Perception and Psychophysics
• University of Aosta Valley

Carocci editore Studi Superiori Che cos'è la biofilia? È il nostro amore per la vita e per la Natura. La biofilia è innata ma non istintiva, per questo va educata affinché possa fiorire in una relazione sana e gratificante con il mondo naturale. Unendo rigore scientifico e scrittura colloquiale, il volume, in un'edizione aggiornata e ampliata, desc...

Articolo integrale: https://www.ingenio-web.it/articoli/biophilic-design-migliora-l-apprendimento-a-scuola-e-rinforza-il-sentimento-di-affiliazione-con-la-natura/

(1) Background: Connectedness with Nature is a personality trait that influences our relationship with Nature. But Nature is not all the same. Wilderness is Nature in its original form, the form within which human beings have evolved as a species, while what we refer to as domesticated and urban Nature are relatively recent products of our interact...

Ripartire dalla Natura: l'approccio One Health per promuovere la salute e il benessere. Un e-book, scaricabile gratuitamente, per contribuire al miglioramento della salute di persone, animali ed ecosistemi. https://newsletter.erickson.it/iscrizioni/ebook-gratuito-OneHealth

Citation: Berto, R., Barbiero, G., and Salingaros, N.A. (2022) Biophilic design of building façades from an Evolutionary Psychology framework: Visual Attention Software compared to Perceived Restorativeness. Visions for Sustainability, 18, 7054, 1-34. http://dx.

Humans are inherently attracted to all that is alive; this attraction is called biophilia. Biophilia is an evolutionary trait which contributes to self-preservation and reproduction, and it does so by providing us with useful information about the natural environment. Biophilia was initially used by Erich Fromm to describe the psychological orienta...

Biophilic design is an architectural model that offers the possibility to create the Nature-based Innovative Learning Environment (ILE), which might support cognitive processes and stimulate affiliation with Nature. Bracing Biophilia is an exploratory research programme which verifies the effect of Nature-based ILEs on pupils’ attentional performan...

Biophilia is a human personality trait described initially by Erich Fromm and later by E.O. Wilson, both of whom agree that biophilia has a biological basis and that it is fundamental to develop harmonious relationships between humans and the biosphere. This review aims at establishing a definition of biophilia as an evolutionary process. To this e...

Wildflowers are plants rich in diversity that can be used in many different ways. Nevertheless they are not widely used in Italian urban settings. This exploratory study aims to investigate preference for wildflowers. To this end, seventy-six adults answered a questionnaire developed to assess a series of wildflower pictures for preference (picture...

Research within the environmental psychology area shows the benefits that Nature contact offers to typical children in terms of better mood, better social relations and on improved cognitive functioning. Although many psychological benefits in childhood have been highlighted by researchers from different backgrounds, atypical children have scarcely...

The literature highlights the importance of vegetation to enhance the ecological and visual qualities of streets and paths; however, when studies specifically focus on rural greenways they do not consider users’ assessments of the planting design. This exploratory study aims to contribute to this issue. It is hypothesized that planting combinations...

Individuals are not passively affected by the physical characteristics of the environment. On the contrary, they react to it and try to modify it. Their efforts are towards environments more restorative and sustainable from a cognitive point of view, i.e. environments where daily life is less stressful and more satisfying. The aim of this explorato...

Dear Readers, Today, to create the places in which individuals dwell, work, learn, have fun, recover from illnesses, etc., basically where they live, and to achieve the aesthetics, functionality and comfort they desire, is not only a demanding quest for architects, planners and designers, but also-and above all-for those experts addressing the indi...

La biofilia è un costrutto psicologico scoperto dal biologo americano E.O. Wilson (1984) dell’Università di Harvard che la definì “l’innata affiliazione emotiva che gli esseri umani stabiliscono con altri organismi viventi” (Wilson 1993, p. 31). Per quanto intuitivamente comprensibile, questa definizione di biofilia è piuttosto vaga, perché è diffi...

This mini review looks at the affective bonds and the cognitive benefits at the basis of the relationship between human beings and Nature, as a solid starting point for an environmental education program aimed to foster naturalist intelligence. Evidences from studies of years of joint research in evolutionary biology and environmental psychology fi...

According to traffic accident reports, many of the accidents that occur at intersections are caused by elderly drivers, and development of an assistant system that can prevent non-stopping accidents (i.e., accidents that occur by not stopping when required) is currently a pressing need. To develop an anti-stopping alert, it has been assumed that an...

This study investigates the relationship between the level to which a person feels connected to Nature and that person's ability to perceive the restorative value of a natural environment. We assume that perceived restorativeness may depend on an individual's connection to Nature and this relationship may also vary with the biophilic quality of the...

Le strategie progettuali volte a realizzare l'edificio nZE si concentrano soprattutto nella ricerca di materiali e di processi eco-compatibili, spesso trascurando la sostenibilità “cognitiva” dell’edificio. Questa lacuna deriva dalla scarsa conoscenza che in generale architetti e progettisti hanno della biofilia, il nostro legame con la Natura, leg...

Despite the name, current “green” architecture pays exclusive attention to being environmental friendly rather than being biophilic as well. Disregarding Nature in design is not just a matter of aesthetics but concerns also the quality of people’s lives. In order to achieve this, there is a need for a paradigm shift from “green” to “restorative” in...

This brief communication wants to draw greater attention to the role of physical environment in the psychological restoration process. Given the benefits deriving from contact with Nature, urban designers should also attend the human need for psychological restoration. According to the Attention Restoration Theory, performance, mood and well-being...

Exposure to restorative environments can restore attention from mental fatigue. The question arises as to whether this restoration is peculiar to attention or whether it also pertains to memory performance. This study aims to verify whether memory performance can be restored in mentally fatigued people. A week after the baseline assessment, 62 subj...

The attention is aroused and the mind occupied without purpose ". In this sentence, Olmsted (1865) argued the importance of nature for urban dwellers, emphasizing that nature restores because it holds attention without mental effort, it is pleasurable and blocks out the demands and stresses of daily work and urban living. It is commonly known that...

We explored the hypothesis that the restorative value of a place is affected by the structural properties, i.e. a common quality not represented by the built or natural content. The visual structure of natural patterns inherently possess self similarity between scales, which can be measured with the fractal dimension, D. Fractal properties can been...