The Impact of Arts & the Environment on Healing, Prof Marek Dominiczak, 02.12.’13

Many thanks to Prof Dominiczak for his excellent talk on how arts and the environment impact on healing.

Through the use of iconic pictures like Pablo Picasso’s ‘Science & Charity’, Prof Dominiczak showed how healthcare does not need a big spaces to deliver healing. Patients are often anxious and fearful when approaching  institutions involved with healthcare and this needs to be borne in mind when designing spaces used for healing.

Through looking at different hospital models over recent centuries e.g. the work-house hospital or Florence Nightingale’s pavillion hospitals, we saw how manipulation of light, space, nature and textures helps us to improve healthcare spaces.

We considered modern hospitals and centre’s around the West of Scotland, including the now award-winning ‘Maggie’s Centres’ for Cancer Care. It’s impressive how some of these environments are helping to normalise illness and integrate or re-integrate patient’s within the community despite the limitations that illness may present.

While some scientific evidence exists in support of healing spaces (esp Ulrich, RS, Science, 1984), these spaces are a cultural and not a scientific issue. Patients need to feel comfortable, safe and secure in healthcare environments as well as to remain within their cultural sphere. Normal life should encroach on illness life and diminish it.