Branches of Healing – Designing Psychatric Spaces with Biophilia in Mind – a focus on pediatric care.

Abstract

This thesis examines the potential of biophilic design to promote mental health in inpatient psychiatric facilities for children and adolescents. The starting point is the observation that mental illnesses are among the most common health problems worldwide, often manifesting before the age of 14, while at the same time the natural environment has increasingly disappeared from the daily lives of young people. Given the empirically proven effects of nature-oriented spaces on stress reduction, emotional regulation, and cognitive recovery, the question arises as to how architectural design can be therapeutically effective, particularly in an institutional context characterized by security requirements and spatial restrictions. This thesis combines theoretical foundations from biophilic design, salutogenesis, evidence-based design and neuroarchitecture with a comparative case study analysis. Eight national and international institutions, including psychiatric clinics in Vienna, Graz, Hall, Bangkok, Ranchi, Leuven and the University Children’s Hospital Zurich by Herzog & Meuron, are analyzed and compared using a specially developed evaluation framework. The findings are being applied in a concrete design proposal for the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Department at the Hietzing Clinic in Vienna. The developed concept of the “inner landscape” transforms an existing corridor with five thematically distinct therapy rooms: Cloud, Sea, Pink, Universe and Forest, into a layered therapeutic environment. The central argument is that spatial differentiation is in itself healing: an environment that offers diverse experiences and choices strengthens patients’ capacity for action in a setting where this is often severely limited. The work concludes with a call for systematic research on post-occupancy analysis and emphasizes that while architecture cannot cure mental illness, it can actively contribute to coping abilities and should be understood as part of treatment in a clinical context.