Design for Human Flourishing: A Novel Design Approach for a More ‘Humane’ Architecture

Abstract

Architects today still highly rely on intuition attempting to handle more emotional, well-being-related design requests of clients. It seems that newly formed design demands present challenges that cannot be fully answered through the current existing design paradigms. Additionally, a 'humanization' trend in architectural design can be noticed of influences that steer architecture on a more 'humane' course, thereby advocating the viability of 'well-being' as a structured design approach in architecture. This paper aims to answer to this current momentum in architecture, by explicating a novel design approach called 'Design for Human Flourishing' (DfHF), based on a literature study of well-being theory through an architectural lens. Concretely, five well-being related attributes will be identified that define DfHF's characteristics. Furthermore, what DfHF means in architectural practice will be illustrated via a design example.

Healing Architecture in Healthcare: A Scoping Review

“…Many studies aim to foster innovation in the design of clinical spaces, often advocating the inclusion of stakeholder perspectives to do so (e.g., Annemans et al, 2017; Duque et al, 2020; Stevens et al, 2019). While this is important, improved understanding of how healing architectures, and purpose-built facilities, more broadly, are made to make a difference in practice, is equally critical.…”

“…There is now an extensive literature in health geography (Andrews, 2004;Cummins et al, 2007;Duff, 2011;Kearns & Moon, 2002), the sociology of health and illness (Ivanova et al, 2016;Martin et al, 2015;Nettleton et al, 2018), and architecture and design (Annemans et al, 2017;Stevens et al, 2019) exploring the mediating relations between the built environment and experiences of care and recovery in healthcare settings. Ulrich's (1984Ulrich's ( , 2008Ulrich's ( , 2010 pioneering work on evidence-based-design has been a key reference guiding research on how healthcare facilities can be designed to promote well-being, in general, and the development of healing architecture, in particular.…”

“…The primary analytical focus of recent attempts to explain the therapeutic significance of healthcare settings has typically involved assessments of the impact of spatial design (DuBose et al, 2018) and select architectural properties on health outcomes, as a way of enhancing understanding of the lived experiences of people occupying individual sites where care is provided. As a result, a host of novel conceptualizations have emerged, including work on therapeutic landscapes (Gesler, 1992, 2005; Pinfold, 2000), enabling places (Duff, 2012), therapeutic assemblages (Foley, 2011), and, more recently, design for human flourishing (Stevens et al, 2019) and patient-centered care (Vaughan et al, 2018). In a recent review of the literature, DuBose and colleagues (2018) explore the concept of healing spaces, identifying four antecedent components (psychological, social, behavioral, and functional) to assess how healthcare spaces can foster healing, offering a draft definition, where healing spaces evoke a sense of cohesion of the mind, body, and spirit.…”

Tika technology

“…Escobar (2018) argues that the current model is antithetical to life on the planet: profound cultural and ecological transitions are urgently needed, and design can contribute to this shift. And Stevens et al (2019) set out a new well-being-based approach to architectural design they term 'Design for Human Flourishing' .…”

Architecture of home in later life: towards a fivefold theoretical model

“…Yet, semantically, “ageing in place” is a broad concept (Fernández Arrigoitia et al , 2018; Wiles et al , 2011), and the complexity of the “meaning of home” (Aplin et al , 2013) entails the need to address in an equally important way both the physical dimensions and the “internal psychologically-based ties” between persons and places (Rowles et al , 2003). However, according to recent studies, it would seem that architects, probably lacking support on this matter, have a more limited understanding of emotional-related users' requests (Chrysikou et al , 2016) and mainly deal with those through their own “intuition, personal experience or gut feeling” (Stevens et al , 2019; Van Der Linden, 2018).…”