The healing power of architecture
John, a hugely experienced architect and University of Brighton alumnus, has been working with colleagues around the world to promote the idea of the healing environment since the mid- 1980s. He cites a US experiment in 1984 which showed that a group of men who underwent gall bladder removal and were in a hospital with a view of a beautiful lake recovered faster and needed less pain relief than a similar group of men who were in a typical urban hospital. “The difference in recovery was purely down to the environment in which they were placed,” said John.
He says the way buildings are designed, including the use of colour, texture, light, the way they control unwanted noise and the views from hospital windows are now recognised as an important part of the recovery process. “If a hospital is too forbidding or hi-tech and alien, it will increase the tension patients feel about going there,” said John, adding that more detailed research needs to be done on the therapeutic effects of distracting patients from their anxiety about their visit.
He was able to put his ideas into practice when he was appointed the first chairman of the South Downs Health NHS Trust in the 1990s and initiated a three-year research programme for NHS Estates to examine the effect of architectural design and the effects on patient outcomes. The importance of creating a healing environment is now being taken up in architecture courses in a number of countries, including Norway, Sweden, Canada and Italy. The principle behind the healing environment – that buildings should be fit for purpose – has been a prime motivator for John’s work, which included the design for Hove Town Hall.
He is critical of ‘star’ architects who seek to impose iconic buildings on places and says the duty of the architect is to be sensitive to the needs of the client.
Having been President of the Commonwealth Association of Architects and visited 33 of the 54 Commonwealth countries, he is clear, for example, that you cannot just “plonk down a western building” in a developing country. “You need to try to understand the lifestyle and culture of the place,” he said. “You need humility and to acknowledge that you know less than the client about their country.”
His interest in international architecture, which he is continuing in work with the House of Lords on an award for low-cost health buildings in developing countries, was in part inspired by his training at Brighton’s School of Architecture in the late 1940s. Although it was a period of austerity, several of the teaching staff had returned from army service in far flung locations and were “bubbling with enthusiasm” about the different kinds of architecture they had seen.
John also spent most summers working abroad and won three travelling scholarships, one of which was in Rome where he learnt about the importance of space on design. “It was not just about the buildings, but about the streetscape and the juxtaposition of buildings,” he said. “The buildings had to be imbued with a sense of being appropriate to the space.”
John, who has just written his memoirs, says his advice to current architecture students, who may face years of recession, is to generalise rather than specialise: “If you have some knowledge of the outside world you will have a more satisfying career.” His own career, which has encompassed a huge range of voluntary work, from being a magistrate to serving on a BBC advisory committee, is testament to this. He adds: “If there is a silver lining to the recession, it will be to put a brake on vanity projects by ‘starchitects’ and refocus architects on the broader needs of society.”
John kindly donated a copy of his memoirs, Behind the Facade: An architect at large, to the Aldrich library, earlier in the year.
July 2010
