Salutogenesis, Design + Health: Embracing Holistic Tactics to Fostering Wellbeing in Built Environments

Abstract

[EN] Built environments play major roles in shaping our physiology, sociology, psychology and spirituality. In fact, the environments in our cities, communities, spaces and places prove primary determinants of public health. From engineering exercise out of cities and generating toxic compounds, on the negative side, to creating green spaces and ensuring our ‘right to light’, on the positive side, the designs of our landscapes, buildings and interiors seriously impact our wellness, happiness and quality of life. The present research explores new and more holistic ways of approaching design with wellness at the core. The researcher, an architect & psychologist, has spend decades investigating more integrative, sensitive and inclusive means of approaching the conception, construction and occupation of built environments. Central to the current paper is the conduct of a senior research architecture studio focused on the principles of Salutogenesis, a theoretical frame and mode of practice developed by sociologist Aaron Antonovsky. Salutogenesis assumes an opposite posturing to pathogenesis – the norm in most health care systems whereby disease is treated after it surfaces. In a more preventative and proactive sense, a Salutogenic strategy considers the person in concert with many environmental forces in play, from societal + personal stressors to the spaces + places in which we work, play and dwell. A senior level graduate studio provided a rich milieu to explore aspects of the environment that can contribute to better health, more happiness and an improved quality of life (QoL). Unlike typical studios, which often dedicate a short & superficial opening block to research, the present project embedded a one-month intense research period (Phase 2) into the studio schedule. After completing a month of conceptual design work (Phase 1 – solo work), students collaborating in teams explored key areas & pressing topics with rich connections to and potential implications for health, namely: agile architecture, restorative design, alternative medicine, and systems & cybernetics. In a one-day external seminar (hosted by a construction association), student research teams presented their findings to diverse content experts, including professionals drawn from medicine, architecture, interior design, construction, human ecology, and urban design. Armed with the four thematic research reports, together with the guidance of the aforesaid content experts, the students (now working independently) moved into the design development component (Phase 3) of their Salutogenesis Institute 5000 m2 building projects. A key goal of this ultimate part of the studio was to deploy in a demonstrable + evidence-based fashion, the research findings in ways that positively reconsidered parameters and reshaped design. In the end fourteen building designs were realized, all of which embraced theories of Salutogenesis while concurrently valuing research, using holistic tactics, and placing