Healing architecture - A different approach of hospital design

Abstract

Every day, in hospitals around the world, thousands of people spend hours, days, months for investigations, diagnosis or treatment, in search of healing. For patients and their families, the experience of the time spent in the hospital is often a crucial episode of their lives, whether their child was born there, whether it was the place where the life of a family member or loved one has been saved or a bout of illness was cured or treated there. The hospital often represents a milestone in people’s lives, a landmark underlying society’ life. The increase in the number of patients with chronic diseases, of the percentage of aging population and the number of patients requiring treatments influence the hospital’s contemporary approach, and issues such as the above will become even more significant in the future. Future hospitals will have to meet the citizens’ requirements, expectations, but especially their increasingly higher and more diverse needs. In this context, in order to gain the citizens’ confidence, hospitals need to become a safety landmark for the community, where quality care and effective care spaces should be designed and developed so that they provide a positive contribution to the healing process. There is growing awareness that the patients’ evolution and healing are influenced directly by the environment in which the healing process is carried out, so this concept has become the key to architectural layouts when hospitals and health care establishments are being designed or constructed. The aim of this paper is to define and present those innovative features of hospital design – both spatial and aesthetic - that would positively impact on the patients’ healing process. By creating an environment with positive psychological stimuli, reflected in an efficient structure and friendly interior finishings, the architecture of hospitals would support a contemporary approach to the treatment, recovery and healing of the patients.