HEALING SPACES
by Dr Ruzica Bozovic Stamenovic

Building healthy spaces—the ones that won't harm us—is already a norm, but designing healing places is more complex. Fulfilling functional needs and safety is a must, but reaching more sophisticated expectations like well-being is what really matters the most.

One thing architects agree on is that architecture is much more than merely designing and providing a shelter. Even the most primitive hut could have the underlying aura of home and meaning reaching beyond its function or shape. Qualities of any built environment are ultimately reflected as personal sensations of different kinds positioned between satisfaction and dissatisfaction. People like certain spaces and dislike others—we as architects comment and describe features that contribute to the verdict. And yet, in the process of rationalising the impact that our environment generates, we often face an interesting paradox—a place could be highly praised for positively affecting our sense of well-being despite its poorly rated individual components or vice versa; spaces designed according to elaborate design legislation sometimes just don't feel right to its users.

Looking into this paradox becomes crucial in times when a healthy population is considered a strategic asset of every society as health related budgets rise. Health is an important personal and social resource. At the same time health is extensively endangered by effects of modern lifestyle. For example in Singapore, stress related diseases are becoming major causes of deaths compared to infectious diseases half a century ago. Overall urban development, high building standards and improved levels of hygiene apparently did not bring along the comparable breakthrough in terms of healing. Thus, the construction of new, paradigmatic healing spaces in the public domain, particularly in healthcare, becomes an issue of paramount importance.

TOTAL HEALING ENVIRONMENT
The concept of Total Healing Environment is already introduced in design theory as an expected standard for cities of the future. It is critical for healthcare design but also applicable to housing, working environments, hospitality industries and all public spaces. Just as sustainability has become customary after a major shift in treating natural resources, achieving Total Healing Environment is our next major social and professional target.

Total Healing Environment model is a coordinated multidisciplinary approach based on the World Health Organization's definition of health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. According to Aaron Antonovsky, this complex understanding of health led to a salutogenic rather than pathogenic approach to healing and well-being. Before curing the illnesses we have to understand and take control over environmental and social influences on health and wellness. Over the past few decades many behavioural and environmental risk factors such as smoking, pollution, and noise, have been determined and addressed, but these determinants of disease or disability were perceived as originating outside the body. In the salutogenic model, however, individual perception of the environment is acknowledged to be as equally important for the psychophysical state of one's body and mind as other generic external risk factors. Our perception of the built environment may alter our feelings about it and thus become more important than the sum of quantifiable characteristics of the space. In the Total Healing Environment model we operate with new terms like positive stress or eustress, positive distraction, empowered users, etc. The objective to building a generic healthy space is now converted into a utopian idealistic attempt to create healing places. Many questions arise: How to design spaces based on the salutogenic model? What constitutes a healing place? How is a healing place different from that of a healthy space?

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Dr Bozovic Stamenovic is Assistant Professor of design at the Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore. The theory of health and space and their interconnectivity is at the core of her teaching and research interests. Her current teaching and research programmes are focused on foreseen changes and new paradigms in the area. She has published two books and research papers promoting the idea of healing spaces. As a practising architect, Dr Stamenovic has won major architectural prizes in the former Yugoslavia and over 15 national and international competition awards. She has also participated in over 30 exhibitions including the prestigious "The Biennale of Venice" in Italy (1985, 2002).

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