Hospital Build & Infrastructure Europe Congress

Giuseppe Lacanna about 'The happy hospital'

A hospital will never be a happy place where to be; however a hospital has to be designed in a way that supports and facilitates the patients' stay. Giuseppe states that the issue of healing environment has to be treated with more scientific rigor, and framed within the bigger topic of evidence based design.

There is a big difference between the terms healing and supportive. The hospital spaces have to be designed certainly in a more supportive way towards the patients’ condition: the so called “patient centred approach”. Instead of talking about healing, we should focus on research based design, evidence based design, and start to implement into the design process educated researchers specialized in healthcare design: a radical change into the overall design approach. Healing environment is only a part of the evidence based design world, and the ebd approach can really make the difference in the way how healthcare facilities are designed.

 

During the last congress Hospital build & infrastructure Europe, held in Hamburg, Giuseppe after having seen the concept of healing environment being promoted via an extensive application of pictures of nature and urban environment into the hospital, stressed the misuse of this concept and the need of a more research oriented approach. The risk perceived is that healing environment is going to be used as a trend, and minimized by people that have no clue about its scientific roots.

There are researchers, EDAC specialists and specialized architects, which treat this subject very well. It is therefore important that those specialists stand out and show the correct way this new approach to hospital design has to be applied, protecting it from the risk of being manipulated in a wrong way by marketing logics.