About this episode
Lyn Falk is founder and president of Retailworks, Inc. – an award-winning branding, design, display and consulting firm specializing in retail, corporate, and hospitality spaces. She has devoted over 35 years to teaching and helping retailers and business professionals build healthy, purposeful and productive spaces that move hearts, minds & merchandise. Her expertise in retail design, business, science, consumer behaviour and environmental psychology has helped her develop designs that not only meet but often exceed her client’s projected goals/sales. Lyn is a passionate advocate of biophilic design. From her perspective, it is important all the time, humans are part of nature and need to reconnect with the environment rather than living in a built environment that pulls us away from nature. Early in her career she was really keen on healthy design, sustainable design and eco-friendly design and took an early interest in Biomimicry and Biophilia.In this podcast, Lyn describes herself as a long-term preacher and educator in the sphere of biophilic design. To her, "Everything is energy, even this brick building I'm in is made from molecules and atoms and energy,", and different materials like glass, wood, and brick vibrate differently, affecting our senses and well-being. She emphasizes the importance of natural materials like wood, which have not undergone extensive processing and retain their original energy. Her designs always include the immediate benefits of incorporating natural elements like plants, natural light, and fresh air into design and as many other elements the brief allows.Lyn's design philosophy is rooted in the understanding that we are fundamentally part of nature, not separate from it. "We cannot exist without abiding by the laws of nature," she says. "We've perhaps been forced into built environments that pull that out of the environment, but we're now seeing the results of that." Those results, according to Lyn, are all too apparent in the retail and hospitality sectors, where a focus on maximizing profits has often come at the expense of human needs.Lyn believes that by reintegrating nature into our built spaces through elements like natural light, plants, and natural materials, we can not only improve the customer experience, but also the wellbeing of employees. "I always say if I had to work in a cubicle, just shoot me," she laughs. “We are living nature, and we've been put in buildings that are static and not necessarily living, breathing buildings.”The key, Lyn argues, is understanding how our senses and subconscious respond to different environmental cues. For instance you can increase dwell time by having your customers listen “to the right genre of music for your target market and for the product that you're selling and your brand the right genre of music at the right volume and the right aroma, people think they were only in your store for
