The Aesthetics and Architecture of Care Environments

Book excerpt: Evaluating the built environment in a comprehensive manner is both challenging and topical. The environment influences us in a multitude of ways, simultaneously and personally. We feel, hear, see, smell, and even taste the environment that surrounds us. Care environments, in particular, are complicated and their effects on users difficult to estimate. However, the aesthetics of care environments carry huge potential to induce wellbeing, enhance quality of life and, thereby, affect the healing and rehabilitation of patients and residents. This book applies experimental Q methodology - a qualitative method for systematically analyzing human subjectivity - in search of a new way to evaluate care environments. The focus is on the role of aesthetics as experienced by the actual users and stakeholders of ten high-quality and award-winning care environments in Japan and the European countries of Finland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, France and Austria. A total of 45 participants, including architects, members of the administration, care staff, patients, residents, and their relatives give their subjective accounts on the aesthetic features of the care environment. Five aesthetic discourses and a set of shared aesthetic values are identified, which transcend building-type specific, contextual and professional boundaries. The aims are to increase our understanding of care environment aesthetics and architecture, and thus contribute to the design of future care buildings that fulfil the values and expectations of the users.