Connecting with nature
L.E.A.F was conceived as a platform to promote the Floral and Horticultural industries of New York and to advocate the multitude of benefits that arise from connecting with nature.
Flowers are scientifically proven to increase happiness, decrease worry and anxiety, enhance productivity and reduce stress.
It is our ambition to use L.E.A.F to bring New Yorkers closer to nature and cultivate their engagement with the floriculture and horticultural worlds by making it relevant and accessible to today's contemporary audiences.
Today, living a meaningful, happy life is about creating, sharing and capturing memories earned through experiences that span the spectrum of life’s opportunities. By creating a new experience for New York that harnesses nature as its centrepiece we hope to provide a trojan horse for consumers and brands to engage in the environmental agenda, whilst enjoying a contemporary and fashionable moment for the city.
Biophilia
Biophilia (taken from the Greek word meaning 'love of life and the living world') is human's innate attraction to nature and natural processes, conceived by Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in the 1960's, it suggests that we all have a genetic connection to the natural world built up through hundreds of thousands of years of living in agrarian settings.
It is a term popularized by American biologist Edward O Wilson in the 1980’s, when he observed how increasing rates of urbanisation were leading to a disconnection with the natural world. With high rates of migration to urban settings – Biophilia is of ever-increasing importance to our health and well-being in the built environment.
The World Health Organisation expects stress-related illness, such as mental health disorders and cardiovascular disease, to be the two largest contributors to disease by 2020. With a diminished connection to nature, the increasing pressure on urban space & the ubiquitous technological presence we have less opportunity to recuperate our mental and physical energy. Incorporating direct or indirect elements of nature into a 'city lifestyle' has been demonstrated to reduce stress, blood pressure levels and heart rates, whilst increasing productivity, creativity and rates of well-being.
