Helena

A lifelong student of Nature’s restorative powers, Helena first took to the solace and community of a garden following her beloved younger brother’s death in childhood. For more than 30 years, she has devoted her professional life to the design of places that heal by reconnecting people with Nature, places that make people - and animals, plants, and pollinators - especially her favorite bumblebees - feel sheltered and at home.

In a parallel process of ongoing research in evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, chronobiology, and biopsychology (to name but a few) Helena has deepened her understanding of the design ingredients essential for well-being places, the elements & patterns embedded in the places we love.

Helena considers Architecture a Health Care Profession and has made the creation of spaces that foster cognitive legibility, cognitive ease, and positive emotional engagement with place her primary area of exploration. She views human attachment to and caring for place as essential for sustainability, as well as for physiological well-being.

Helena is a Steering Committee Member for the international Biophilic Cities Network and facilitates workshops and team charrettes in Biophilic Design & Urbanism as well as for Living Building Challenge (LBC) accreditations.

As founder and president of BioPhilly, she and her team seek to promote the important link between human health and wild habitat biodiversity in urban Philadelphia.

Travel in the Americas, the Middle East, Asia, and Subsaharan Africa taught Helena much about climate-adaptive building. Extended stays with family in North Africa immersed her in adaptive living close to nature’s cycles, seasons, and weather in extreme heat environments.

Helena is a member of the AIA Academy for Health in Architecture. She teaches and lectures nationally and internationally at various universities including the Weitzman Executive Program in Design for Sustainability at the University of Pennsylvania; Drexel; Pratt; the Politecnico di Milano, Italy; the Bauhaus University, Germany; and Thomas Jefferson University, where she developed her acclaimed interdisciplinary seminar  ‘Environments for Well-Being’.
Her steady focus is on Biophilic Design, Biophilic Urbanism, and the intersection between architecture, public health, and biodiversity.
As an active Planning Commissioner since 2002, Helena has advised the governing body in municipal planning, zoning, and land use regulation towards sustainable low-impact growth for the well-being of her local community.