Design and Health - The Therapeutic Benefits of Design

Design and Health - The Therapeutic Benefits of Design, edited by Alan Dilani, 2001, AB Svensk Byggtjanst, Stockholm, B&W illustrations, 327pp ISBN 91 7332 963 01

This book collects the presentations and papers from the Design and Care in Hospital Planning 2000 conference, which was held in Stockholm and organised by the book's editor, Alan Dilani. The meeting was a major international gathering of leading thinkers and practitioners working in healthcare design in all its forms (see HD, Sept 2000, p10). The contributions to this book therefore cover a variety of fields, from the therapeutic benefits of design in children's hospitals and elderly facilities, to the design of equipment for intensive care.

There are several case studies from leading projects across the world featured, such as the San Diego Children's Hospital in the US, the Vidar Clinic in Sweden and the RIT 2000 project, underway in Trondheim, Norway. The book is also a highly useful resource for those collecting research on the benefits of better environments for patients and staff, as several papers constitute research papers, either surveying existing research, as in the case of Roger Ulrich's paper for example, or displaying new findings.

Ulrich's paper, "Effects of Healthcare Environmental Design on Medical Outcomes," is a typically ambitious yet down-- to-earth one, attempting to nail down a "Theory of Supportive Design". While many of the factors suggested as guidelines may be common-sense to good healthcare architects, perhaps it is useful for novices to refer to a set of design criteria such as this, backed up by evidence.

Other examples of research-- based articles in the book are Peter Scher and Peter Senior's Exeter Evaluation (UK), Robert Horsburg's study on the experiences of architects as patients in hospital, and Tores Theorell, professor of psychosocial medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, reporting his team's psychotherapy study of the effect of art on patients. Mardelle McCuskey Shepley provides a useful survey of the research in existence in paediatrics. Blair Sadler gives a detailed report on the benefits of a therapeutic environment as demonstrated by the San Diego Children's Hospital, and Clare Cooper Marcus surveys outstanding and not so outstanding hospital gardens.

At the "harder" end of the field, Hakan Eriksson discusses improvements in clinical practice (under the slightly misleading banner of 'Medical Research and its Impact on Healthcare Design' - misleading in that the 'impact' is not really discussed). Kirk Hamilton, president of the American Academy of Architecture for Health, looks at innovations in intensive care, and Eric Fang puts forward possibilities of re-integrating hospitals with cities. And Anshen Dyer's Ken Schwarz provides a useful unpicking of the UK private finance initiative from a designer's perspective.

All in all, many useful comments and examples of research are collected together for possibly the first time in this form. Gary Coates' article, principally a review of the outstanding design for the Swedish alternative therapy centre the Vidar Clinic, contains one of the more memorable messages: "Health can be described as a living process of adaptation to constantly shifting inner and outer conditions, rather than as a stable and fixed state of a separate and autonomous 'self'. To create environments that support and enhance the process of healing, therefore, architecture must be concerned with creating a total environment that both supports and images this dynamic process".

James Parker, editor, HD

Copyright Wilmington Publishing Ltd. Jul 2001
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