Healing Architecture

The expression ‘Healing Architecture’ (Lawson, 2002) is used to call on a sense of a constant effort in creating an environment that is both physically and psychologically friendly (Aripin. 2007).

Aripin in his article states: “most literature in the healing environment have outlined that noise control, air quality, thermal comfort, lighting, communication, colour, texture, privacy and view to nature are among the physical factors which have to be thoroughly considered in hospital design (Malkin, 1991; Gross et al., 1998; Schweitzer et al., 2004 and Richard et al., 2005). These factors have a more pronounced influence in hospitals than in other buildings especially for patients who are bedridden or have limited freedom of movement.” (Aripin, 2007). This suggests that I should take to consideration these aspects of design when starting to develop my final year project rehabilitation centre for children with scoliosis. My centre would be a home for a period of 1-2 months to children after spinal fusion surgery. Since they would have to spend most of their time in bed, it is important to create a comfortable and friendly environment for them to heal faster.

Aripin has stated a few other crucial factors that need to be taken to consideration, when creating a healing environment, these would include: “glare control, flickering-free lighting, orientation of the light to the visual task, colour rendering and temperature, and balance between electric and daylight.” (Aripin, 2007).

In my research and design proposal I will be looking into these areas of architectural design that can improve a healing process:

Hospital design
Natural lighting
Passive Ventilation
Acoustics
Plants/Courtyards
Peaceful areas
Bridges/ramps between spaces
Ergonomics of the space

Questions to discuss:

How can architecture create a healing environment?

What aspects of healing architecture are the most important?

Daylight, planing, privacy, openness, green environment, connection with nature.

‘Architecture can make us feel better, help us flourish and even heal us.’ – Kevin McCloud (Grand Designs, 2013)

Optimal Healing Environments

Design Strategies

Figure 23

Figure 24

These figures give an abstract idea of what healing environments need to achieve and what facilities to include. First figure draws attention to the three main aspects involved in the process of achieving optimal healing environment, which are: People, Places, Process. These three aspects then show what they require. People need wellness, places need to be sustainable and process for providing healing has to be efficient. All of these combined aspects can be built to be an optimal healing environment.

Second figure provides with information about facilities that are common and not, and which are more sustainable. This gives me a clear idea of what sustainable facility areas that are not so common I should look into. These would include: therapeutic gardens, family and community areas, daylighting, home-like feel, and great acoustics.

Children’s Hospital, Zurich by Herzog & de Meuron

This design by Herzog & de Meuron architects is perfect in relation to healing architecture design approach. They have designed this proposal for a children's hospital and teaching/ research centre in Zurich, Switzerland.

The Children’s Hospital is a 3-storey building, around which are situated a series of courtyards that form a sort of ‘introspective town’. Both patients and their relatives can commute without restrictions in between the different treatment areas. The hospital building was meant to create a child-friendly atmosphere. Its similarity to pavilion-style structures both in scale and materials makes the building stand out from the usual hospital designs. The construction will utilise locally milled timber and will house a number of ‘round and rectangular plant-filled courtyards for patients and their guests’. The interior courtyards open up to the outside, which instantly gives an impression that nature is welcome here.

This is what Jacques Herzog says about the scheme: “We chose to create a horizontal, finely structured building with a lot of natural light. The small scale and the material properties of this wooden building are factors that have already proved highly successful with our REHAB clinic in Basel. In the case of the children’s hospital, this seemed a particularly apt approach for the young patients and their parents.” (Frearson, 2012)

Breathing Rooms/ Courtyards

I was looking into design of so called breathing rooms and courtyards. These would provide a relaxing and peaceful areas for patients to relax and take a break from the treatments and struggles they go through. This design aspect can be used inside and outside as suggested from the visual resources bellow. The curves, cracks and space separations could represent the struggles that adolescent scoliosis patients go through while dealing with scoliosis. Curved spines of scoliosis patients could be compared to trees, that from a closer look are not straight ether.

Light and Directed Spaces

“A brightly lit space beyond the place occupied can indicate the continuation of rooms, it can signal the relationship of one space and another can reveal and suggest a route.” (Brooker, Stone, 2004, p.184)

Light and airy spaces that guide you through the space gives you hope and self-belief in healing and going through struggles at the end. These images provide the feel that I want to shape in my rehabilitation centre. Another aspect of design for scoliosis that I feel is important to be incorporated into the design, is building distances through the spaces that could be reached and walked through during the day while recovering from surgery and taking the first hard steps. That is why I feel it is important to incorporate ramps as well as stairs to have better accessibility inside the centre.

Ergonomics by Didier Fiuza Faustino

Ergonomics of furniture and space design are another very important aspects that I will have to take to consideration, when starting to design my rehabilitation centre. From the images bellow we can see some ergonomic struggles that people might experience every day, now imagine wearing a plastic back brace for 23h a day that surely is even more uncomfortable. That is way I will have to design the spaces and furniture around the special needs of comfort for the children with scoliosis, which experience discomfort every day while sitting, walking and sleeping. From the personal experience I can suggest what areas of ergonomics need to be looked into. The images below show how can the comfort be achieved by creating a specific form of structure to lay on or very loose strings where your body embraces the freedom.

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