There’s a great post over on a blog called Ouno about the ability of design to bolster healing outcomes. It draws heavily on (and later on in the post, reprints in full) a Scientific American article by Emily Anthes, How Room Designs Affect Your Work and Mood, that nicely summarizes the findings of several environmental psychology studies that looked at how the space we occupy impacts our mood.

According to an academic quoted in Anthes’ article, the field of Environmental Psychology developed around the question “‘What is there about people that we need to find out about in order to build buildings that respond to people’s needs?’

Since the field took off some 40-50 years ago, we have seen the results in various modern design.  The most famous variation of that design, today, is the ‘Green Building’.  It’s not simply that these buildings make efficient use of energy, they also make use of things like light and space to help occupants feel at ease.  A new generation of Green Hospitals is even showing that certain environments which feature ample amounts of natural light and views of the landscape aid patient outcomes.

That hospitals should be more than featureless monoliths of tile, small windows, and and off-color white hallways is probably obvious to many.  Less obvious is the question of why within a fairly short period in the 19th century, the notion of what constitutes the ideal healing environment transformed from a picturesque, countryside manor, into a dim hospital room.

The Ounus blogger has this answer:

It seems obvious that architecture would affect human behaviour and capabilities, and it’s exasperating that in the West we so often have to reinvent the wheel, usually by employing science to restore knowledge – in this case architectural and kinaesthetic knowledge – that has been developed over centuries and even millennia in other places. I’m thinking of the carefully worked-out design of monasteries and churches as places that generate inspiration and contemplation for example, or the genius of  Japanese house design. But if we have to reinvent the wheel, then I guess we have to reinvent the wheel.

She is pointing out that in our eagerness to modernize all of our knowledge, to make it more rigorously scientific, a lot of our common sense knowledge that’s been built up over hundreds and thousands of years, gets needlessly lost.  Thinking about where I would rather recuperate from an illness, a country manor/beach house or a hospital room,  I tend to agree with this line of logic.   The continual loss of knowledge in society is fact. Common sense wise,  it makes sense that I would recover faster in a place where I was happier and more relaxed.

I am also aware that this is the exact same reasoning  used by Traditional Chinese Medicine advocates, and advocates of other traditional medicine traditions.  So, I know that the reasoning has its flaws when applied too broadly – not everything from the past makes sense just like not every TCM medicine can beat out a placebo.

So, check out the article and the links provided.  Give it some thought.  Then, if you want, share some ideas here on the blog.