'More focus on wellness in the design phase'

Ann Petermans has supervised several master and doctoral projects on the impact of (interior) architecture in the healthcare sector on happiness and well-being. "Did you visit a hospital recently, whether or not for a visit or treatment, a short or long stay? Then think back for a moment to the room or space you stayed in at the time, and more specifically to its spatial quality. What did it look like? Was there daylight or artificial light? What material was on the floor? Was the radio on? And was there noise?"

Why do you ask these questions? "To make it clear that in design/architecture it is often the case that if 'the picture is right,' you don't really need to notice anything special. Only when a small element is wrong does it become noticeable, which entails that you can start to feel a little uncomfortable. In a hospital, for example, this could be when the signage suddenly stops before you reach your goal. In a design, every detail counts, but in hospitals this was not always obvious."

"With the spread of Christianity, attention to sick care grew as part of the Christian task. For centuries, religious institutions played an important role in caring for the sick. In places affiliated with them, the sick were usually cared for in large halls with many beds. Those halls were in many cases dark, cold, poorly ventilated and unsanitary."

"The answer to this problem was the 'pavilion' plan, first implemented in the Paris Hôpital Lariboisière, built in the mid-nineteenth century. Driven by a growing concern for hygiene, several buildings were planned around a central courtyard, with plenty of greenery. Galleries separated the buildings to prevent infections. Each place thus had to get enough light and air. This approach, with multiple patient wards seemed to improve patient recovery and reduce infection rates, inspiring more and more hospitals. But over the years, medical techniques and practices improved, impacting design and layout. Private rooms and taller buildings with mechanical ventilation arrived."

"That's how we end up with today's hospitals. They are places where care must be provided efficiently to a growing number of patients. This requires a complex logistical operation. At the same time, users also want something different. People no longer only want to receive the purely functional care they need; they also want to feel good and 'experience' something at the place of care. These continuous developments must be translated along with
a hospital design."

What does this mean in practice? "We often find that when designing new hospital buildings, the involvement of various stakeholders is too limited. Of course, patients, visitors and medical staff are important actors in a hospital, but a lot of logistics activities also take place there and a lot of people work in the kitchen, cleaning and in IT and management positions, for example. More eyes see more potential problems and have needs and wishes that may be different. Of course you cannot hear every individual user, but through patient associations and focus group interviews you can already achieve a lot. It can be extremely valuable to embed that diversity of actors more into the design phase of hospitals."

"In some spaces, functionalism prevails. There's nothing wrong with that. But other environments are highly emotionally charged, such as a palliative ward and maternity. There, the experience of the place is very important. Therefore, this must be given attention in the design. This includes much more than the color of the wall paint, a flower vase or a homely piece of furniture. It is not about those individual elements in themselves, but about the total experience of those places, where many things interact with each other to provoke a total experience. Those are things that stick with people."