Health
A modern health institution is one that offers one of society’s most central welfare services putting focus on how architecture can help users and employees feel at home
The institution should be a rehabilitative environment where social interaction, physical movement and personal needs can be addressed in an inclusive and holistic environment.
3RW has long experience in design based on the concept of health-giving architecture. We want to create inclusive environments with good relationships between the users, employees, surroundings and context. This architecture aims to create a positive and relaxed atmosphere by mixing the recognizable with the innovative and forward-looking. The goal is to support mental processes that ensure physical accessibility and increase the individual’s focus on their own body.
In order to create health-giving architecture, the process and dialogue with users is crucial. User participation is about anchoring the individual building brief among the those who will actively be using the spaces. This should ensure that solutions take into account the needs of the individual user groups. Thus, we see user participation as an important contribution to the overall quality assurance of a construction project.
The vision is to create a new typology that will organize one of the most important welfare tasks in society and cover all aspects of the healthcare terminology. The idea of a hamlet where the well-being of home and treatment accommodations of a big institution are mixed, will inspire future institutions. The new healthcare facility offers a broad range of different treatments under one roof from nursing homes to doctors’ consultations and therapy.
In line with increasing life expectancies, we are experiencing a higher number of dementia and Alzheimer’s cases in older people also with an unexpected increase in the number of younger Alzheimer’s cases. Today’s nursing homes already have difficulty meeting these constantly-changing and very individual patient needs. The pressure on health services will continue to increase unless there is innovative development in technology, treatment and methods of care.
Our health architecture is designed with focus on residents and their relatives’ needs. The centres contains well-known elements from the residents’ everyday life of safety and contribute to the residents sense of autonomy. The development’s formation reflects that of a small society as opposed to an institution with a variety of functions in the spectrum between private dwellings and social/common areas, all bound together by village-scaled urbanized and natural spaces. This composition of built environment facilitates the residents’ gradual transition from being well-functioning to being dependent on care, and crucially seeks to allow residents to maintain a relatively normal life in a confusing new reality.
