Architectural Curator Darrin Alfred Reflects on the Natural World

Reflect On Nature With Darrin Alfred

Interior Design: What was the genesis of “Biophilia?” 

Darrin Alfred: With my landscape background, and having lived for 16 years in Colorado, I was interested in the deep connection people here feel for the outdoors. I see it in California, too, but I don’t think we necessarily understand where this passion comes from or why we have an enduring bond with the natural world. I began noticing work that addressed the environment—the greening of design—but also did more than that by exploring how nature affects our physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual development, individually and collectively. Around 2016, I pitched the idea of a show underscoring the transformative role in contemporary designers, architects, and artists can play in rekindling this bond. It got pushed aside by other projects, the new galleries, and then COVID, but everything started to solidify about two years ago, and here we are.

ID: How would you characterize these types of work in general?

DA: Works that call us to heighten our senses, to observe the natural world more closely. They offer moments of quiet catharsis that allow us to slow down amidst the hyper-accelerated digital lives we all live today. In looking for works that really do that, we developed three themes or lenses to help bring them into focus. 

ID: What’s the first theme and what pieces in the show represent it?

DA: Natural Analogs, which relates to the shapes, structures, and geometries found in nature—the spirals, honeycombs, and dendritic patterns that our brains have developed an affinity for. A good example is the Floraform Chandelier by the Palenville, New York, studio Nervous System, which translates the cellular growth patterns of leaves and petals using complex algorithms and 3-D printing to fabricate a nylon hanging light that casts intricate shadows.

ID: What’s the second category?

DA: Natural Systems, which explores nature’s dynamic processes—seasonal and temporal changes such as weather patterns and botanical growth cycles. These works are more immersive and multi-sensory, like Meadow by Amsterdam studio DRIFT; it’s a kinetic sculpture of oversize mechanical silk flowers that mimics the nyctinastic opening and closing of blossoms in a choreographed sequence. Or the international art collective teamLab’s Flowers and People, an interactive digital installation with a meditative soundtrack that presents a year’s worth of computer-generated seasonal flowers blooming and withering over the course of an hour. 

ID: You’ve dubbed the final theme Topophilia. What’s that?

DA: It delves into the emotional and spiritual connection that humanity has with the physical environment through works that highlight the interplay between people and nature, culture and place. Desert Paper—a collaboration between Aranda\Lasch, which works out of New York and Tucson, Arizona, and Terrol Dew Johnson, an artist, basket weaver, and member of the Tohono O’odham Nation in Southwestern Arizona—is a series of experimental vessels incorporating natural materials Johnson gathered in the Sonoran Desert. Here in downtown Denver, the Populus hotel by Studio Gang takes its name from the Latin for quaking aspen, an instantly recognizable symbol of Colorado. The 13-story scalloped facade evokes a stand of the trees while the distinctive window shapes resemble bark patterns on their trunks. It’s under construction but should open around the same time as the exhibition.