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Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Buildings can help healing
By Mary Ellen Breen
HUNDREDS of local people are involved in research to discover how buildings can contribute to healing, with Waterford Health Park commended for its curing architecture.
The multidisciplinary healthcare campus in the former Presentation Convent at Slievekeale, Waterford, has been praised by Wayne Ruga, an internationally respected architect and interior designer specialising in how the built environment impacts on health outcomes.
Eight years ago Dr Ruga developed a concept called ‘generative space’. Dr Mark Rowe, the Waterford general practitioner who helped develop Waterford Health Park, is one of 10 people in five countries that Dr Ruga is working closely with on further analysis of how buildings can contribute to healing.
Research is currently ongoing among 800 patients in Waterford to examine their experiences of primary healthcare prior to and after the opening of Waterford Health Park.
Speaking at a lecture in the building Dr Ruga told his audience in Waterford that while his work has primarily focused on healthcare, much of the theory applies to all workspaces.
“Some buildings are life-giving and some are ‘sick’. It is not only about the building, it is about how the building impacts on those who work in or visit it.”
The Harvard University specialist also said there was a considerable economic as well as social and health upside to positive healthcare design.
“The more this concept is taken up, the less will be our dependence on costly care in hospitals. It really expands health beyond treatments and care. A positive, well-designed healthcare setting improves patient vitality and life prospects.
“Similarly, the built environment more widely can help us tackle obesity and diabetes while it also impacts on crime and income levels all elements of health, though they may not always be recognised as such. At its most basic, it is about buildings and systems serving people not the other way around.”
The Waterford Health Park campus, which opened in May 2009, has been cited as an example of best practice in conservation and reuse of older buildings and features in the Government Policy on Architecture 2009-2015, Towards a Sustainable Future: Delivering Quality within the Built Environment.
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