The relationship between healthcare architecture and nature: interaction with the landscape as therapy

Abstract

This paper analyses the relationship between healthcare architecture and nature as an effective means for the treatment and therapy of hospital patients. A relationship that has existed continuously since antiquity, but which has been abandoned in the last century in favour of hospital grounds marked by an eminently functional character, in the vicinity of which hostile spaces have been built, most of which are used for parking private vehicles. With our research we seek to recover the introduction of nature into hospital spaces and their context in accordance with the latest scientific advances that allow us to concretely assess the benefits that nature generates in patient therapy. In order to do this, we explain which are the perceptions that facilitate the improvement of patients according to their pathology and the feelings they must perceive in order to obtain these benefits. Likewise, in order to evaluate and illustrate some of the architectural responses that have recently been made in accordance with these criteria, we will use different case studies in which architecture and land-scape are appropriately integrated. To this end, we will use a graphic methodology that allows us to identify the aspects that hospital design can contribute to user perceptions, which result in their improvement. In short, the aim is to establish guidelines that support the development of the architectural project and improvement of health spaces as a whole, through architecture and a sustainable and integrating landscape for all citizens.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.20365/disegnarecon.33.2024.19