Enhancing Universities’ Outdoor Seating

Given the essential role that universities play and their significant impact on community development, alongside increasing enrollments and expanding options in higher education, environmental considerations now significantly influence students’ campus choices. Consequently, enhancing the quality of education and services offered to students is crucial. This has resulted in a focus on integrating sustainable development into campus preferences, as students and staff demonstrate increased concern for environmental issues, with recent studies highlighting the importance of enhancing health and well-being in sustainable campus settings. Accordingly, the study’s concept emerged from the objective of designing outdoor seating that promotes student socialization and outdoor activities in response to the unpredictable variations in temperature caused by climate change. Seating designs aim to enhance safety and provide psychological and physiological comfort for students. Biomimicry stands out as a valuable approach that leverages nature as a blueprint, imitating its structures, functions, and ecological systems to address design issues. Using natural solutions, this strategy promotes creativity. Therefore, the primary goal of the study was to improve students’ seating design by using biomimetic concepts to apply printed fabrics with distinctive features. The research methodology integrated biomimetic design exploration and an empirical survey to identify the specific needs of students and evaluate the proposed seating concept. The study’s findings indicated distinct preferences for adaptive outdoor seating, alongside particular considerations for environmental protection, thermal comfort, and seating flexibility.