There is an urgent and ever-growing awareness worldwide of the need to invest in healthy and sustainable infrastructure. By applying salutogenic design principles that seek to promote greater health, this landmark shift can begin to occur. The resulting and striking healthful outcomes of such existing structures bring these concepts to the forefront of global building opportunities. This approach now comprises the leading edge of change in our society. By embracing these precepts to shape our built environments and infrastructure, we engage in shifting the quality of such environments. Salutogenic architecture is taking its rightful place in the vanguard of preventative care strategies that have the potential to change our lifestyle for the better.
Research Highlights
A Unique Health Promoting House Development
The Health House in Èze with a "Salutogenic approach" developed as a prototype project as an answer for the built environments for housing and as a model to be developed further for the future health. Housing environments have an important role in the lives of individuals and communities, and therefore these environments need to be designed with wellness factor within surrounding nature to support health and wellbeing. The Project is expected to become a landmark in Èze, involving both universities and industries to be part of future healthy development direction of living planning inspired by Salutogenic design.
Health Promoting Lifestyel Center
Half of all deaths of children under the age of five occur in Africa, where only a few countries are able to spend the $34-$40 per person per year that WHO identifies as the minimum necessary to meet a population’s basic healthcare needs. The continuous improvement of the quality of life and wellbeing of all African citizens will be founded on the recognition that a healthy population is the foundation for social development and economic growth. It requires new perspectives that consider wellness factors to encourage innovative design for a healthy environment. Design objectives for enhancing human health must facilitate an active lifestyle, enable the successful management of physical, psychological and emotional stress, and support mental and cognitive processing of information by stimuli in a variety of designed environments. Central to this is the development of a scientific research base that explores the application of a ‘salutogenic’ approach to health infrastructure – preventatice care that moves the focus away from risk
factors and the treatment of disease towards a holistic understanding of a healthy society in the African context.
Health Promotion by Design in Elderly Care
The elderly population is significantly growing and increasing the demand on healthcare services. Simultaneously, attitudes and perspectives on ageing are changing. A conscious and well-educated generation with new and different points of reference is emerging. The prosperous society has also created larger economic possibilities for an active and rich life for seniors far into old age. This development poses demands for changes both in health treatment and in the design of physical environments for elderly people at the same time new opportunities for private sector to be involved. Elderly people and specially with dementia progressively lose their coping abilities and perceive their environment as more stressful, resulting in anxiety and behavioural syndrome when their environment can’t support their specific needs. Behavioural problems require constant supervision because the person may become disorientated, be unable to express their needs and show signs of agitated and disruptive behaviour. Our scientific evidence shows that problematic behaviour in people with dementia and elderly people in general is strongly related to the degree to which residential environments fulfil their needs. Treatments are needed immediately to sustain their remaining ability and to reduce problem behaviour, such as verbal and behavioural agitation, depression, and social withdrawal. A combination of pharmacologic, behavioural, and environmental approaches could be the most effective treatment in improving health, behaviour, and quality of life for elderly. Medical care cannot be separated from the physical environment in which it is delivered. The outcome of pharmacological care and supportive environmental design is an important part of the therapeutic process.
