REPAIR: Transdisciplinary, co-created research into human-nature restoration through biophilic adaptation

The growing frequency of extreme weather events, leading to floods, storms, heat stress, and drought, is making people increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Our cities and citizens must adapt to the escalating challenges posed by climate change and nature loss. Nature-based or ‘biophilic’ design offers a powerful solution, improving lives while enhancing biodiversity and restoring connections with nature. Biophilic design helps mitigate environmental stressors and increases climate resilience. Despite proven technologies, barriers to scaling biophilic design persist, including perceptions of value relative to cost, lack of industry awareness, skill gaps, policy obstacles, and cultural attitudes towards aesthetics. Overcoming these barriers is crucial for unlocking the potential of nature-based solutions for urban adaptation. Our project will accelerate nature recovery and climate adaptation by delivering evidence-based, replicable pathways to biophilic urban adaptation. We will explore the BIOSWA project: a 13-storey biophilic retrofit in Swansea, incorporating social housing, office, retail, and community facilities. We cannot simply build our way out of the climate and nature crises—retrofitting is essential. This project will examine how biophilic retrofitting addresses climate adaptation and its potential cultural, social, health, ecological, and economic benefits. It will also identify the human-centred challenges that hinder its widespread adoption. At the core of this transdisciplinary investigation are the arts, humanities, and co-creation. Experts in creative writing, design, architecture, history, law, anthropology, psychology, and ecology are collaborating with societal partners in social housing, construction, urban-nature restoration, and green infrastructure to co-define our research agenda. Our local and international partners in health, arts, government, economic development, and the biophilic global movement will help shape, disseminate, and implement our findings. Our team convening approach supports the transdisciplinary aims of our research through collaborative leadership, reflexive learning, and inclusive governance. Our research will place the BIOSWA building in its local and national contexts, exploring the journey from a former Woolworths store to thriving social housing and community hub opening in 2025. This project aligns with Wales’s Well-being of Future Generations Act, and pinpoints wider regulatory and policy issues that challenged delivery. Using mixed, iterative, collaborative methods, we will map and evaluate the experiences of people living and working in the building, and the ripple effects of BIOSWA in the city and region. The building's performance will be monitored by technicians and citizen scientists, with public responses to this data explored. Artists, creatives, diverse communities, schools, policymakers, and other interest groups associated with the building will share their experiences and visions for future urban environments, generating new insights and research challenges, which will be integrated into the project’s exploration of biophilic living. The project’s outputs will include tools and frameworks to address barriers and provide pathways to biophilic living. These will encompass policy briefs, biophilic scorecards, design frameworks, skills maps, curriculum materials, creative works, interactive exhibitions, international symposia, biophilic practitioner and arts networks, and transdisciplinary publications. This unique, timely, in-depth study aims to drive cross-sector culture change and accelerate the global movement toward socially inclusive biophilic living, contributing to human and planetary well-being.