Essay On Healing Architecture

“When you are in a healing environment, you know it; no analysis is required. You somehow feel welcome balanced and at one with yourself and the world. You are relaxed and stimulated, reassured… you feel at home.” CAROL VENOLIA

This research is an exploration of how architecture can evoke feelings or experience within the user of the space by mere design (phenomenology), more so, used as a key aspect in therapy (therapeutic architecture).

There is need to study behaviour, beliefs and way of thinking of people to understand how to create designs that will work for the user. In so doing, architecture meets or intersects with phenomenology, the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first person point of view. (Woodruff,

The understanding of these concepts would inform the designer of what to embrace in that particular space, what to include or exclude from a design.

Hence, therapeutic architecture which is also referred to as healing architecture, has been applied in construction of buildings like hospitals, clinics and rehabilitation centres, hospice centres. Exploring this aspect of the building environment provides an in depth understanding of how best architecture can be applied in the medical field to improve patient’s wellbeing through influence of patient experience, using architecture in healing.

Healing is often attributed to nature, as in the case of healing gardens and hot springs but healing can also be achieved in buildings and this is what defines therapeutic architecture. Most researchers mention health care facilities as the only building types under therapeutic architecture but many more building types can be reflected upon. Why wait for someone to fall sick when it can be prevented or reduction of risk by using therapeutic architecture where people spend most of their