Beyond Green Walls: Specifying High-Performance Liquid Metal to Meet Biophilic Design Principles
Rethinking Biophilic Design for Contemporary Architecture
Biophilic Design is often reduced to a familiar visual language: planting schemes, green walls, and expansive glazing. While these elements play an important role, they represent only a fraction of what biophilic design seeks to achieve.
For architects and specifiers working on complex, high-traffic environments, successful biophilic design can be about literal references to nature but also, how materials behave, age, reflect light, and stimulate the senses over time. Texture, material authenticity, complexity, and non-rhythmic sensory variation are central to achieving this.
Liquid metal finishes offer a sophisticated way to embed these principles into architectural surfaces, without compromising performance, durability, or maintainability. When specified correctly, liquid metal becomes a high-performance natural analogue rather than a decorative afterthought.
The Subtlety of Biophilic Specifying
The recognised framework of biophilic design includes 15 core patterns. Patterns such as Material Connection to Nature, Complexity and Order, and Non-Rhythmic Sensory Stimuli are particularly relevant when specifying architectural finishes. Liquid metal supports these principles by using real metal content rather than imitation coatings.
Applied in micron-thin layers, liquid metal retains the tactile and visual qualities of metal, cool to the touch, reflective, and responsive to light, while allowing a level of flexibility that solid metal cannot offer. For specifiers, this enables the use of authentic natural materials in areas where traditional metal would be impractical due to weight, form, or cost.
The Durability Argument: Biophilia in High-Traffic Spaces
Biophilic design should not be limited to low-contact or feature areas. In fact, some of the most impactful applications are found in receptions, workplaces, retail spaces, and public interiors, where users interact with surfaces daily.
Liquid metal is particularly well suited to these environments. Its seamless application eliminates joints and fixings, reducing areas where dirt can collect, while its durability makes it comparable to powder-coated metal in abrasion resistance.
Low-maintenance, easy-to-clean finishes contribute directly to healthier internal environments and improved indoor air quality, an often overlooked but critical aspect of biophilic design. Materials that perform well over time reduce the need for replacement, supporting both environmental sustainability and long-term wellbeing.
Patterning Nature: Achieving Complexity and Variety
One of the defining strengths of liquid metal is its ability to achieve non-repeating, naturalistic patterns. Unlike manufactured panels or printed finishes, liquid metal is hand-applied, allowing for variation, depth, and subtle irregularity, qualities found abundantly in natural systems.
Collections such as Revelare’s Inspired by Nature demonstrate how liquid metal can be patterned to echo geological formations, erosion, and organic textures. These finishes provide the sensory richness required to satisfy the biophilic principle of Complexity and Order, structured, but never uniform.
Liquid metal can be cold sprayed, brushed, spatula-applied, or worked into textured substrates, allowing it to take on the form beneath. This makes it possible to achieve complex surface expressions across curved or irregular geometries that would be difficult or impossible using solid metal.
Time, Change, and Patina: Designing with Natural Processes
A defining characteristic of real metal is its ability to change over time. Copper, bronze, brass, and iron naturally oxidise, creating a patina that reflects exposure, environment, and use.
In biophilic terms, this gradual transformation supports sensory variation and reinforces a connection to natural processes. Rather than remaining visually static, the surface tells a story, one that evolves with the building and its occupants. Where appropriate, this aging process can even reference local context, subtly embedding place-based identity into the material language of a space.
Where design intent requires visual consistency, clear protective coatings can be applied to preserve the finish, allowing specifiers to control how time and patina are expressed.
Light, Reflection, and Non-Rhythmic Sensory Stimuli
Natural light is a cornerstone of biophilic design, but its interaction with materials is just as important as its presence.
Liquid metal surfaces interact dynamically with light, producing soft reflections that shift throughout the day. This can mimic natural phenomena such as dappled light or water reflection, creating subtle, non-rhythmic sensory stimuli that support wellbeing and spatial awareness.
In urban or interior environments where views to nature may be limited, reflective metal surfaces help reinforce circadian rhythms by visually marking the passage of time.
Material Versatility Across the Architectural Language
Consistency of material language is another key principle in biophilic design. Liquid metal’s versatility allows the same finish to be applied across walls, joinery, furniture, fixtures, and fittings, creating a cohesive sensory experience throughout a space.
This continuity is difficult to achieve with traditional materials, particularly on curved or complex forms. Liquid metal allows specifiers to maintain natural textures and tones across diverse substrates, often replacing synthetic materials where a closer connection to nature is desired.
Honorary Mention
The 15 patterns of biophilic design used to be 14 but a 15th was added, Awe. Awe, recognises the emotional impact of spaces that challenge expectations and shift perception. Materials play a significant role in achieving this.
Liquid metal’s combination of real metal properties, seamless application, and depth of finish often surprises users on first interaction. It looks like metal, behaves like metal, and yet appears in forms and locations where metal is rarely expected. When used thoughtfully, it creates moments of discovery that elevate both space and experience.
Specifying the Future of Responsible Design
Biophilic design is evolving. As expectations rise, architects and specifiers are increasingly required to move beyond surface-level gestures and deliver environments that perform, technically, emotionally, and sustainably.
Liquid metal offers a rare combination of authentic materiality, design flexibility, durability, and sensory richness. From complex patterning and reflective light play to natural ageing and cross-surface continuity, it provides a powerful toolkit for advanced biophilic specification.
If you’re looking to integrate specialist, high-performance biophilic finishes into your next UK or international project, our team of artisans would be happy to collaborate.