Dr Alia Fadel

Dr. Fadel’s research, teaching, and practice interest includes biophilic design and planning, architectural and landscape architectural applications of Interval Biophilic Restoration for human physiological, psychological, and emotional health and productivity, systematic observation-based research and analysis, and diagnostic post-occupancy studies.

As she believes in the ethical responsibility to research and design for human health and well-being, Dr. Fadel’s scholarly work focuses on the interrelationship between Design, Health, and Contact with Nature in Urban Settings. It aims at investigating the design applications of Interval Biophilic Restoration (IBR) to mitigate stress, support health, and prompt productivity. It explores the multidisciplinary historical and theoretical premises of the evolutionary basis and scientific foundation of Biophilia in addition to its design applications. Considering the growing concerns underlying psychological and emotional health in academic environments, Dr. Fadel’s PhD research focused on both macro and micro scales of stress-alleviating opportunities that result when students interact with on-campus nature and mediums of nature-simulation. Her research introduced a concentric growth approach to observation-based methodology for designing and employing a Comprehensive Framework of Biophilic Analysis. This Framework aims at investigating the potentials of on-campus mediums of “Transitional Cultured-Nature” (Fadel 2016) to provide restorative intervals for student stress mitigation. Anchored in the ethnographic observation-based methodology she established, tested, and implemented in her PhD research, Dr. Fadel’s ongoing scholarly work aims at further investigating this systematic, yet interactive, approach to biophilic analysis to capture, analyze, and document the biophilic moments in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urbanism.