design:retail - July 2018 - 6

editor's note

006

The Sound
of Silence

ALISON EMBREY MEDINA
EDITOR IN CHIEF/ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

alison.medina@emeraldexpo.com
@dretaileditor

OMEWHERE DEEP

in the archives of my
iPhone, there lives
a video that I watch
over and over again
in times of need. It is
my go-to source of calm when I find
out my flight has been delayed for
an hour, when the taxi cab is stuck
in traffic or when I've just learned
my luggage has been diverted to the
wrong city. It is a short, 20-second
clip I took in Muir Woods outside
of San Francisco (which, ironically,
I visited with coworkers on the way
to the airport last year) of a small
babbling brook wandering amid the
awesome redwoods. I cannot describe the overriding sense of peace and calm that
overwhelms you when you step foot inside that forest. The video captures the essence of the forest, in
that the sound of this tiny babbling brook with the
water just slightly trickling over smooth-backed
boulders is so loud in your head that a whisper
would be lost to it. I could have watched and listened to the sound of that water all day.
I returned from a trip earlier this month to find a
lovely pink-bow-wrapped package awaiting me on
my desk. It was a book gifted from my dear friend
Judy Bell, chief energetic officer of Energetic Retail
and regular columnist for us at design:retail. Upon
taking in the cover and title-"Forest Bathing: How
Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness"
by Dr. Qing Li, chairman of the Japanese Society
for Forest Medicine-I slowly opened the book and
immediately dove in.
Dr. Li contends that nature innately makes
us feel good. A sense of comfort arises from the

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sound of the forest, watching sunlight through the
leaves or breathing in a long, deep breath of fresh
mountain air. It brings rejuvenation and vitality,
even if we cannot explain why. "We know this
deep in our bones," he says. "It is like an intuition,
or an instinct, a feeling that is sometimes hard to
describe. In Japanese, we have a word for those
feelings that are too deep for words: yūgen. Yūgen
gives us a profound sense of beauty and mystery
of the universe. It is about this world but suggests
something beyond it."
It was an eye-opening read for me, because I
clearly identified with the "nature deficit disorder"
that much of society is living with today. I recognize
that my mood is completely altered by sunlight-it's
why I don't have blinds or window shades on the
back of my house. We back up to a wooded forest,
and I love the shadows that are created when the
light pours into my home. I love the change of seasons, and the change of scenery we get with it, from

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the lush summer foliage to the wondrous fall colors. It feels like home.
In 2017, Apple made many headlines when it announced it was
planting a forest-some 8,000 trees
transplanted from nurseries across
California-around its newly designed headquarters in Cupertino,
Calif. Dubbed "Apple Park," the
campus' trees are not only meant to
beautify Apple's 176 acres, but also
will absorb atmospheric carbon, a
process called sequestration. Humans expel carbon, but plants can
absorb and reuse the carbon into
producing beautiful foliage.
At NeoCon last month in Chicago,
a recurring theme of biophilic design
and nature-inspired patterns came out of many of
the flooring, surfacing and fabric companies I visited. Lovely spring flowers filled the shadow boxes
that lined the streets of the Magnificent Mile, and
retailers and restaurants alike brought as much of
the warm June air into their spaces as possible. The
new glass-enclosed Apple store-a majesty of retail
architecture if you have not yet visited-offered a
place to sit against an in-store tree and a view out
to the Chicago River, all while shopping. It was a
beautiful thing.
Then, of course, I returned to the airport,
where my flight was promptly delayed. So, I put
my headphones on and returned to my babbling
brook. Yūgen.

Photo by NMSTUDIO/SHUTTERSTOCK

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