Content area
Full Text
Abstract
This paper contributes to understanding the origins of designing landscapes in support of mental health by examining early influences and practice in Ontario. Connections are made with respect to the history of therapeutic landscapes, the restorative landscape movement and the contributions of early medical practitioners. The design of Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital in Toronto, created more than one hundred years ago, provides insights into the form and use of landscape for restorative and therapeutic purposes. Recent adaptive use of the Lakeshore Hospital grounds suggests a continuing link between recreational and therapeutic use of landscape in support of mental health. Conclusions focus on the relevance of restorative and therapeutic landscape history to contemporary landscape architectural practice.
Cet article met en lumiere les debuts de I'architecture paysagere comme outil d'aide a la sante mentale en examinant les premieres influences et manifestations de ce courant en Ontario. Des liens sont traces entre I'histoire d'environnements therapeutiques, le mouvement pour la restauration du paysage et les premieres contributions des medecins praticiens dans ce domaine. L'hopital psychiatrique Lakeshore de Toronto, fonde il y a plus d'un siecle, est un exemple d'environnement amenage a des fins de retablissement et de therapie. La conservation integree du terrain de l'hopital Lakeshore effectuee recemment demontre que l'amenagement d'un territoire, s'il est concu de facon a en reunir les fonctions recreative et therapeutique, peut favoriser l'aide a la sante mentale. Pour conclure, on souligne la necessite de connaitre I'histoire de ces pratiques, qu'il s'agisse de restauration ou d'amenagement therapeutique, pour les architectes paysagers contemporains.
Key Words
therapeutic, restorative, mental health, landscape architecture, cultural land-scapes
As interest grows in alternative, cost-effective forms of health care, the role of landscape in support of human health is being examined by medical practitioners, environmental psychologists, landscape architects and others. Landscapes have been used in the treatment of patients with mental illnesses since the 1400s (Warner, 1995) and were an integral part of mental health institutions in Europe and the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Kirkbride, 1880; Illinois, 1885; Jaffary, 1942). Although public records indicate that landscapes formed an important part of Canadian mental health institutions in the 1800s, details on the origins, design and use of the outdoor environment as part of these therapeutic facilities have...