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Keywords: architecture design healthcare environment sense sensitive emotional mapping
Humanistic architecture aims to place human welfare at the heart of the art and science of building design and environmental management. In this article we aim to show how humanistic architecture can contribute to public mental health and mental health promotion, using as an example our own architectural and design practice, Nightingale Associates. Nightingale Associates aims to combine psychotherapeutic methods with traditional architectural design to create healing healthcare environments that, evidence shows, can enhance and support the care and treatment process.
Humanistic architecture draws on international research in the fields of psychology and sociology, biology and physiology into the effects of the environment on health (for example, Sommer & Wicker, 1991; Ulrich, 1991a; 1991b; 2001; Zhdanova et al, 2001). It is the task of the humanistic architect to translate this research into projects that place the individuals inhabiting particular spaces at the heart of the design process. Architects and designers are rarely trained in methods of design specification that are specific to healing environments. Traditional approaches to architectural and design are therefore of little use if architects are to reflect on how patients' symptoms or behaviour might be affected by the environments they inhabit, or to provide individualised environments that might ameliorate specific health or behaviour problems.
Nightingale Associates (NA) is a leading UK architectural practice and the largest in Europe specialising in healthcare, science and education. The practice offers a fully integrated service, including architectural and interior design, brief writing, strategic and master planning, and landscape design. NA also has a strong research and development department that gathers international data and collaborates on research projects with universities such as Sheffield, Kingston, De Montfort and the Medical Architecture Research Unit at London South Bank University. Our architects actively engage with staff, clinicians and individual patients; our designers research, interview and record the emotional, physiological and physical symptoms of individual patients in order to create optimal, evidence-based healing environments. This level of interactivity is a substantial departure from traditional practices of healthcare design, and has been implemented on a number of recent projects in the UK such as the Rathgael adolescent regional secure care facility in Bangor, Northern Ireland; West Park mental health hospital, Darlington,...