Design of Therapeutic Spaces for Boosting the Healing Process

Usually hospitals are dull and boring places, that patients do not like them. Therefore, not only the patients suffer physically, but they are also mentally under pressure and prefer to leave the hospital as soon as possible; although they still need treatments. This paper attempts to address affecting factors on the mental health of patients, to improve the design of hospital environment. For this aim, first, the traditional ways of treatment such as alternative medicine were studied. Then, three hospitals in Iran were investigated and compared within ones in developed countries. The results of this comparison showed that, in some countries, the hospitals were designed in a way to optimize the therapeutic space. However in the hospitals in Iran, these kinds of considerations were not observed. Therefore, a study was performed, and fifty people including patients, doctors and personnel of hospital were interviewed. The results were analyzed and the factors influencing therapeutic environment, for both patients and staff, were identified using Kansei methodology. Based on the achieved results, some design criteria for designing hospital environment, were identified. These criteria, would help designers to design more beneficial places for the patient in their recovery process in hospitals. The studies also showed an urgent demand of today’s world for alternative medicine, along with modern medical processes.