September 7–10, 2026 | Trier University | Trier, Germany

How can nature become part of the solution to some of the biggest challenges facing our cities, landscapes, and communities?

That question will bring researchers, policymakers, industry professionals, practitioners, and other stakeholders together in Trier, Germany, for the 6th TERRAenVISION Conference, an international gathering focused on nature-based solutions (NBS) and their role in creating a more sustainable and climate-resilient future.

This year’s theme, “Nature-based solutions to facilitate the transitions for living within the planetary boundaries,”reflects a growing recognition that addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, resource pressures, and environmental resilience requires more than technological solutions alone. TERRAenVISION is designed to help bridge research, policy, and practice so that nature-based approaches can move from promising ideas to practical solutions.

Where the Built Environment Enters the Conversation

While TERRAenVISION extends well beyond architecture and interiors, one of its five major themes focuses specifically on nature-based solutions for land and water management in urban and industrial areas, including soil, water, and spatial planning. Other conference tracks address agriculture and natural areas; fires, floods, and droughts; methods for measuring the impacts of nature-based solutions; and the role of science in helping society transition toward greater climate resilience and circularity.

The urban discussions are particularly relevant to professionals thinking about the future of the built environment.

One 2026 scientific session, for example, examines how nature-based solutions can be integrated within the constraints of existing urban infrastructure. Its premise addresses the consequences of highly impervious cities—including altered hydrology, urban heat, runoff, and pollution—and considers how nature-based systems can become part of a different approach to urban development.

The conference’s larger program also explores subjects ranging from land restoration and biodiversity to climate adaptation, water management, measurement technologies, policy, and implementation.

From Biophilic Design to Nature-Based Solutions

For the GPGB community, TERRAenVISION offers an opportunity to look beyond the scale of an individual interior or building.

Biophilic design and nature-based solutions aren’t interchangeable concepts, but they share an important premise: nature can play a more intentional role in the environments people create.

Inside a building, that conversation may involve living plants, daylight, views of nature, natural materials, living walls, and other strategies for strengthening the human-nature connection.

At the building and city scale, the conversation expands to green roofs and walls, urban vegetation, soils, stormwater systems, biodiversity, heat mitigation, landscape systems, and other forms of green infrastructure.

TERRAenVISION illustrates how quickly this broader conversation is evolving—and why collaboration among scientists, designers, policymakers, industry, and practitioners is increasingly important.

Connecting Research With Real-World Change

TERRAenVISION’s mission is deliberately interdisciplinary. Organizers emphasize that the conference isn’t intended only for scientists. It seeks participation from people working across policy, finance, industry, climate adaptation, sustainable cities, agriculture, and the circular economy.

That approach may be one of the conference’s most important messages for those working to advance greener buildings and cities.

Creating places that work more closely with nature requires more than adding green elements at the end of a project. It requires thinking about natural systems as part of how our buildings, landscapes, and cities function from the beginning.

For GPGB and the broader biophilic design community, TERRAenVISION provides another indication that conversations about nature are moving increasingly toward the center of how professionals think about the future of the built environment.

TERRAenVISION 2026
September 7–10, 2026
Trier University | Trier, Germany
In-person and online participation available.