title: HUMAN-CENTRED THERAPEUTIC ENVIRONMENTS: A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR BIOPHILIC DESIGN
Creators: name: Tekin, Bekir Hüseyin
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2023

description: The emergence of biophilic design as a discipline refers to the innate human connection to nature and natural processes to promote health and well-being in the spaces we inhabit. The principles that define biophilic design can be examined from three different perspectives: as established in building regulations and standards, as used in design practice and as investigated in research practice. When examining each of these areas, we can find several issues and disconnections. In practice and regulatory frameworks, we can observe the use of an unbounded design framework that is not underpinned by scientific facts, do not prioritise principles or parameters, and even considers as a design intervention the use of disparate evocations of nature that do not hold a meaningful sustained connection. In scientific academic environments, there is abundant research on many of the different aspects of biophilic design, but all of this in-depth research providing scientific facts about the importance of nature on humans has happened separately or for a specific design parameter, and not in a holistic way. Current biophilic design frameworks fail to provide efficient guidance, as their design recommendations do not differentiate the level of value of each design parameter for each building programme and context. My position is that a biophilic design framework can only be efficient if it is adapted to specific building functions and is geographically and culturally contextualised. Likewise, the evolution of therapeutic architecture has mostly focused on managerial priorities (mass health working like a machine) and neglected the users' concerns. There is increasing research corroborating that the qualities of the setting in which a patient receives healthcare positively influence health outcomes. Therefore, it has become progressively important to review the concept of therapeutic environments, as places where users are supported in psychological, emotional and social terms. This quest for the optimal healing environment brings to the forefront the need to include other parameters in our design briefs, where the application of biophilic design proves to be paramount, as exposure to nature is associated with multiple health benefits. This study assessed the application of biophilic design in therapeutic environments in the UK and provided a revised conceptual framework that can more efficiently guide designers and policy in future interventions. This framework was informed by synthesised analyses from the user’s experiences, and the data obtained from semi-structured interviews with architects and managers, which was then benchmarked against scientific data about the impact of biophilic design on humans. This comprehensive approach helped to identify and rank those biophilic design parameters that appear the most critical for promoting and supporting health and wellbeing in healthcare settings and provided an up-to-date compilation of crucial design actions to enact the necessary change in future design practice.