Inside Swansea's Greenest Building 🌿

Good morning, Swansea!

Tucked behind hoarding on Oxford Street at what was the old Woolworths and Poundland building, an extraordinary project is nearly finished - and it's unlike anything else in the UK. It's getting ready to open as the country's first fully biophilic building.

But what does a building being biophilic actually mean for the people living there - and the city as whole?

We were invited inside for a look around and to learn all about it, guided by Lucy from Hacer Developments, the Swansea-based company behind the project.

I’ll catch you on Sunday!

Andrew

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The 13-storey Biome on Oxford Street is a partnership between Hacer Developments, Codi (a not-for-profit, and Wales’ largest provider of housing, care and support), and Pobl, who will manage the building once residents move in. Originally expected to complete in early 2022, the project has faced delays - but standing inside the building today, it looks like it will be worth the wait.

The development includes 50 homes for social rent through a mix of one, two and three-bed apartments, alongside low-carbon commercial office spaces, and retail on the ground floor. At street level, the old windows and doors have been replaced by a large retractable shutter that will open up the whole frontage, flooding in light and inviting passers-by to step inside.

The development will also include a “Biophilic Walkway” connecting Oxford Street to the Kingsway - a green corridor with Mowbray Yard - a new public square that can be used for gatherings like markets, live music, and more, in the middle.

The tower - the new-build portion of the project at the rear - contains one-bed flats, while the floors built on top of the original Woolworths footprint house the two-beds. At the very top of the building sit three-bed duplex apartments split across two levels.

The word “biophilic” comes from the idea that humans have an innate need to be around nature, and that philosophy runs through every floor of the Biophilic Living project.

There are four rooftop garden spaces with cockleshell paving where residents will be encouraged to grow their own food, including strawberries, tomatoes, and carrots. Some areas will be pre-planted, while others left deliberately empty - every apartment will have its own balcony with pre-installed grow-boxes, with horticulture specialists on hand to help residents get started.

But the thinking goes well beyond "here's a rooftop, grow stuff." Every apartment faces either east or west, and Lucy explains that different plants will thrive depending on which side you're on. A home user guide is being put together to help residents understand exactly what will flourish on their balcony.

And rather than pre-planting everything, the team decided the better approach was to run planting days with residents once they've moved in - part practical workshop, part chance to meet the neighbours.

And if growing your own isn't your thing? That's fine too. "You can just sit out there if you want to and just be amongst it," Lucy says. "But you also can grow yourself some carrots if you want to." The rooftop spaces are designed to be lived in, not just tended.

The building also hosts a four-floor glasshouse for indoor growing - seed library, potting shed, benches - and on the sixth roof level, tucked into the soil at the back, a shallow circular pool designed specifically to support aquatic insects.

On the 11th floor sits a spectacular winter garden atrium with automated windows linked to a rooftop weather station. "We're talking about putting limes, lemons, having our own biophilic tea," Lucy laughs.

The Biophilic Living building has also been designed to be as energy efficient as possible - and how it works is pretty ingenious.

On the very top roof sit two large air source heat pumps and 50 solar panels. These feed a low-grade ambient heat loop that circulates through the entire building, providing hot water and heating to all 50 apartments. Additionally, a thermal store in the basement captures any rejected heat - so if the commercial floors need cooling, that warmth goes back into the system rather than being vented into the atmosphere.

"All you need to know is it's very efficient and just better for the planet," Lucy says. "It was an expensive cost to outlay at the beginning, but the costs for users will be a lot cheaper."

Add in rainwater harvesting - sustainable drainage systems on every roof feeding into a basement tank, reused for the garden spaces - and the building is attempting to close its ecological loop at every level.

Biophilic Living has been designed as more than just somewhere to live. Hacer and their partners are treating it as a genuine test case for a new way of building, backed by a £3 million research project that will track the whole project from construction through to the experiences of resident once they've moved in - and whether they feel living amongst greenery in an urban environment has improved their lives.

The research partnership is led by Swansea University and includes UWTSD, University College London, Natural Resources Wales, and Hacer Developments itself. Experts in design, architecture, law, anthropology, psychology, and ecology are all involved.

"It's a four-year project," Lucy explains. "The success isn't when this opens. It's in five years once we've sorted out all the problems and addressed those."

The building’s focus isn't purely environmental either, having been deliberately designed to tackle loneliness and social exclusion - the communal growing spaces, the winter garden, and workshops - all of it is intended to give residents reasons to leave their front door and get to know each other.

It's a point backed by Public Health Wales research, which has highlighted that rising rates of single-person households and home working are driving loneliness and declining wellbeing across Welsh communities. Codi describe the vision as a cooperative community - not just neighbours, but people who share resources, skills and experiences.

In some ways, that community is already forming. Future residents have been attending voluntary engagement events at the building for months - and Lucy noticed something happening. "You'd find the ones that came to the first one, they didn't have to come back to the second one, but they did. And they'd come back to the third one — you could see them building friendships."

For all the positives, Lucy is candid about the battles along the way, too. "We wanted to put green walls everywhere - it's on the original drawings. But legislation and insurance just won't sign off on it. There are so many things that stop this sort of green infrastructure, and it all comes down to costs."

The construction of the Biophilic Living building is causing a ripple effect across the city. Standing on the upper floors (where the views across Swansea are incredible), Lucy points out the neighbouring development at 71/72 Kingsway. "They originally didn't have green roofs on the plan. And then when they realised they were going to be right next to Biophilic, they were like, 'Oh, we should put some green roofs on.'"

She also references efforts to show Swansea Council the potential of the city's flat roofs - much like a similar campaign transformed Milton Keynes into the UK's leading city for them. And recently, Swansea applied for and was granted biophilic city status - a formal recognition that the city is committed to integrating nature into its urban environment, joining a global network of cities putting green infrastructure and human wellbeing at the heart of how they plan and develop.

As for when residents move in? "Summertime, I think," Lucy says. "The gardens just need planting, a few snagging bits, and then getting the commercial tenants signed off. And painting." She laughs. "It's mad how many little naggy bits there are at the end."

As UK firsts go, Biophilic Living is a pretty good one for Swansea to have. And its pitch is simple: live sustainably without leaving the city, with shops, restaurants and transport links on the doorstep - and a rooftop garden upstairs.

"There's obviously lots of buildings in London with big green walls," Lucy says, "but nothing that's a building fully committed at every level - the biophilia, the energy, the community. This is the first."

And if it works, it won't be the last. Hacer's ambition is to roll the biophilic living concept out to towns and cities across the UK, and eventually into Europe and North America - and it will all have started here in Swansea.

A big thanks again to Lucy from Hacer Developments for showing us around! To find out more about the Biophilic Building, visit them on Instagram.

I’ll catch you on Sunday!

Andrew.

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