Healthcare Design - December 2017 - 27

GARDENS

THE ROLE
O F FA B R I C
FOR SHADE
A N D S E AT I N G

Healing gardens are best designed to improve mental, physical and social wellbeing when they facilitate a sense of control and access to privacy, encourage
social support and exercise, and give users a means to spend time in nature.
Performance fabric shade structures and seating offer many options in how
gardens are used and the level of privacy they provide. Group interaction,
private conversation or quiet observation can all be accommodated in
comfort when appropriate fabric shade structures and seating are selected.

N AT U R E I S H E A L I N G
The idea of nature as restorative is a concept that spans cultures and is
more than a thousand years old. Contact with nature has long been seen
as beneficial for health and well-being. The World Health Organization
formalized a definition of health more than 65 years ago in the preamble
to its Constitution as, "a complete state of physical, mental and social
well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."
Defining health with this broad definition encompasses the understanding
that there are many dimensions of wellness - and wellness is compromised
when one or more dimensions is out of balance. The human connection with
nature is a bond that can foster healing to restore the balance; early medical
practitioners understood this.
In the Middle Ages in Europe, monastery infirmaries included gardens, often
elaborate, to distract the ill. In the 1800s in both Europe and America, pavilionstyle hospitals were commonly designed with gardens for the patients to use.
Florence Nightingale, nurse and public health reformer, wrote in 1898 that
patients should be able to see out of windows from their beds, "to see sky
and sunlight at least, if you can show them nothing else ... I assert [this] to
be, if not of the very first importance for recovery, at least something very
near it" (Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not). Those involved in
caring for the sick intuitively understood that views and access to nature were
therapeutic, even though they did not understand why.

2 0 T H C E N T U R Y T H EO R Y & D E S I G N
The 20th century leaps in medical knowledge and technology sidelined a
connection with nature. The need to accommodate modern technologies
in healthcare facilities, to improve efficiency and to prevent infection
overshadowed the importance of therapeutic elements such as gardens.
The result was starkly institutional hospitals that looked like office buildings
- exteriors dominated by parking lots and interiors closed off with air
conditioning. This design, combined with an environment in which patients
have little choice or control, led to a setting that did nothing to calm
patients, reduce stress or meet the emotional needs of not only patients,
but also families and staff.

PAT I E N T- C E N T E R E D D E S I G N
The patient-centered care movement of the early 1990s began a renewed
awareness of the negative effects of institutional settings. Economic
factors pushed this movement forward as competition between healthcare
providers grew, and patients had more choices among hospitals and assisted
living facilities. Healthcare organizations are now moving toward a holistic
approach to treating the patient, taking the needs of family members
and staff into consideration as well. The growing body of research on the
benefits of nature to mental, physical and social well-being has meant
that many healthcare facilities are returning to the concept of healing
gardens, this time with scientific evidence and understanding of how and
why they are therapeutic.

Discover by Enrique Ramirez and Alessandra Farias is a circular shade pavilion with spaces for
gatherings and solitary meditation with small perforations and large openings that allow light
and shade to change shape as the sun traverses the sky.

HE ALING GARDEN RESE ARCH
Mounting evidence shows that gardens are one way to measurably reduce
stress for patients in healthcare settings and can benefit family members and
healthcare staff.
In a 1984 study in science, environmental psychologist Roger Ulrich was the
first to use modern medical research standards (strict experimental controls,
quantified health outcomes) to demonstrate that recovery times shortened
with a view of nature. Gallbladder surgery patients with a view of trees healed
on average a day faster, needed significantly less pain medication and had
fewer postsurgical complications than those with a view of a wall.
Even pictures of landscapes can soothe. Another study by Ulrich at Uppsala
University Hospital in Sweden provided heart surgery patients with either
a simulated window view showing a photo of a stream or a forest; abstract
paintings; a white panel; or a blank wall. Patients who viewed the trees or
stream photo needed fewer doses of pain medicine and were significantly
less anxious during the postoperative period than the other patients.
Since these studies, many more have shown that exposure to healing gardens
reduces patient levels of pain and stress. This may in turn boost the immune
system and allow the body and other treatments to help. A well-designed
healing garden can help to restore the balance of physical, mental and social
well-being, and in this sense, it can facilitate healing in anyone who uses it,
not just patients.

CO N T I N U E T H I S CEU CO U R S E
AT SUNBRELL A .COM/HEALING.

http://www.SUNBRELLA.COM/HEALING

Healthcare Design - December 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Healthcare Design - December 2017