Contemporary culture has been largely formed in cities and online. Ideas in our digital era are what circulate on algorithms. Food is what we buy in a supermarket or order on Uber Eats. Everything we consume is packaged outside our purview and exists without an origin story; convenience and speed separate us from connection to our ecologies. The biological life of a garden to today’s urban citizens is more often nostalgia for a way of being encountered through film, video games, and online influencers, than it is a lived experience.

Gardening and immersing oneself in the natural world evoke a sense of wonder reminiscent of The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel first published in 1911. This timeless story continues to captivate the collective imagination through its three young protagonists who discover a hidden garden. By plunging their hands into the soil, planting seeds to rejuvenate the space, and forming bonds through their shared experiences, they are profoundly transformed by the garden's healing power.

“You can do this anywhere,” declares Leonie Woidt-Wallisser, whose mission is to seed nature’s agenda back into everyday living, most notably among architects and through the architectural practice, “Especially when the ideas are written into the core approaches of building, space and city design.” This is a process that extends an invitation to all architects to build a bridge across the gulf of ‘before’ and ‘after’ digital reality. As a trained architect who grew up off-grid in rural Australia, Woidt-Wallisser brings a unique perspective to her work that is rooted in firsthand experiences—wild foraging, planting and harvesting crops, building shelters, collecting water, surviving droughts and heatwaves, being at one with the environment and its diverse species. This rare wisdom, she argues, could be the cornerstone of every design practice and is something everyone with the curiosity and a desire to gain experience can embrace. “All that is required is a change in mindset,” she emphasizes.

The longing for this change in mindset is culturally intense according to Gen Z, the eco-warrior generation of Greta Thunberg, who, as inheritors of the environmental crisis and as future architecture clients, stand as a reminder of how design practices need to continually expand and evolve to reflect the changing needs of the planet. “Touching grass,” a term that has been trending on social media since the pandemic and implies you spend too much time inside on your phone, get outside and touch the ground, points to a global desire spearheaded by youth culture to slow down, be embodied, return to nature, notice the trees and the bugs, and explore what it means to co-inhabit the Earth more equitably with the many species that humans share it with. We have all just, by and large, forgotten how to.

Touching grass is a powerful message for architects, who hold many of the keys to reframing the narratives and lived realities of future generations, and should act as role models. By understanding the principles at the heart of permaculture applied to the design of environments that offer healing—and address the need to heal from the destructive elements of the human-centric gaze on life, and the now ubiquitous states of being both extremely indoors and perpetually online that will only proliferate—architects help shape a new world. “When a site is approached as a living organism, and design decisions are made to support the creatures that burrow and fly there, along with the bacteria and energies that thrive among them, the result is an entirely different map of the site,” says Woidt-Wallisser. “This shift creates a fundamentally new approach to design, the environment, and the overall mindset and experience. Design starts with this enlarged view, then grows like a garden or a forest alive with the dynamic interchanges taking place among its many species.”

Speaking to the architectural milieu that is beginning to embrace biophilia and symbiotic design—movements that require architects and designers to touch grass, too, and become educated in a new way of looking—she adds, “The outcome of thinking and working this way has a snowball, and also a butterfly effect. Nothing is stand-alone in this world. My thoughts, words, and actions affect your thoughts, words, and actions. The same can be said of a building and its site. The health and look of the building, its materials, and vegetation, the traffic flows to and from the site as well as within it, the health of the community entering and leaving the site and bleeding out into the surrounding block, suburb, city—all influence all other areas, and ultimately, the world at large”.

Biophilia, a concept coined by the naturalist Dr. Edward O. Wilson to describe the human tendency to interact and be closely associated with other forms of life in nature, when applied to architecture, acknowledges all biological life forms as equal occupants of a site. Biophilic design enhances our respect for nature and reinforces our sense of obligation to treat other forms of life with loving care. The Symbiocene, a term introduced by the philosopher Dr. Glenn A. Albrecht, builds on the notion of biophilia and applies it to a greater scope of symbiotic thinking, where many species live together in companionship and mutually beneficial harmony. As a step beyond the Anthropocene, design in the Symbiocene is the co-creation of a future where humans are re-integrated with the rest of nature. Here, progress means a new worldview where holistic design is a space and a lifestyle. We begin to repair the despair we feel in witnessing devastating environmental change and experiencing alienation under the illusion of being isolated individuals separated from the whole.

“In my experience, the main aspect missing in our immediate consciousness is the interconnectedness of all living things, which is reflected in the way we treat the Earth, its resources, and its creatures, including our fellow humans,” echoes Woidt-Wallisser, stating that a symbiotic gaze in architecture and design can be pragmatically woven into practice through the guidance of practices such as permaculture. As trillions upon trillions of life forms make up the ecosystem of any building site, protocols such as improving microclimate, supporting soil health, harnessing energy, minimizing waste, blending indoor and outdoor spaces, and designing living roofs, walls, and facades that provide shelter for animals, insects, and other organisms, while also incorporating human food systems such as edible gardens—can all inform architectural methodology and steer projects from the outset.

“Consider the role of water on-site, for example,” Woidt-Wallisser continues, “Its necessity for life, how it flows, and where it may be lost. Knowing what ‘living water’ is, and then asking questions such as: Could the building benefit from diverting water? Where should it be directed, and where should it be avoided? How do the local plant, animal, and human lives interact with water, and how can we purify and manage it on-site? How can the landscape be designed to recharge and replenish groundwater? To design with water in mind offers a deep understanding of hydrological cycles on local, regional, and global levels as well as of ourselves, who are made up of 70% water.”

Approaching the site as a living whole brings it into a very different space psychologically and spiritually. “Considering every aspect of a design through an ecological lens,” says Woidt-Wallisser, “the integration of the landscape with the building, the choice of building materials, particularly the shift from concrete to regenerative alternatives, is central to the ecological vision for a site. This includes how landscape elements evolve over time to increase biodiversity, activate regenerative cycles, and address the often-unseen experiential qualities of the design—each of which contributes to a holistic, symbiotic environment.” This perspective also encompasses the diversity of human life in and around a site. “Engaging the local community in the process and designing with a focus on broader social impact is pivotal. It requires slowing down, stepping off the production treadmill, and returning to a mindset where place is sacred."

“If we don’t take the time to tap into how a landscape communicates with humans and the way materials and methods respond to it, then any building will be an intrusion in its environment,” Woidt-Walliser adds. “This Earth is not just ours to treat as we please. We are one species amongst a bounty of life forms, all dependent on each other. Honoring our appropriate place by considering and remedying the ripple effects of our actions is our evolutionary call to action.”

At a singular moment in the history of our planet, when the climate emergency is increasing alongside eco-anxiety, and technological acceleration is moving us further away from nature, “touching grass” through a design culture that reimagines our ways of being for future generations in future cities, is more urgent than ever. By calling on the healing effects of The Secret Garden as we enter the digital age, the automation age, and the age of AI more deeply, Woidt-Wallisser’s vision is an empowering one to move forward with. “We can’t act from the heart and not care for all life and want to make decisions for the greater good,” she concludes, “As architects and designers, when we bring the garden into the office and build from there, recognizing that even when a project is finished from the human perspective, life’s processes and cycles never are: it is transformational. Seeing and working this way opens a new chapter in our field and with regard to humanity's place in the planetary future.”