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Textiles and Space: The Experience of Textile Qualities in Hospital Interior Design
Abstract
Textiles and the intimate scale of interiors affect the perception of the space extensively. However, knowledge on how interior textiles can improve the experience of hospital spaces is lacking. Contemporary hospitals are often criticized as being too institutional in their physical appearance, and research suggests that more accommodating hospital interiors are needed. Concerned with this awareness, this paper presents the results from a design-based case study, observing and interviewing patients and staff in a hospital dayroom where different interior textiles were installed. The evaluation of the study indicates that patients experience the atmosphere as more accommodating in the refurbished interior, and patients express that they use the dayroom more often. The interior textiles are described as significant contributors to this improved experience. Based on these findings, the paper discusses the potential benefits of implementing textiles in hospital interior spaces in order to promote patient outcomes.
The architecture of modern hospitals in the western world are often criticised of being too clinical and institutional, causing patient stress and general longer hospitalisation. However, in regards to the international focus on constructing new hospitals, new ideas are introduced and focus has shifted towards the design concept healing architecture, visioning an improved healing process supported by stimulating design and architecture.
In this paper we will relate to this future, and by examining the design history of textiles, we discuss how the use of textiles in hospital design can contribute to this vision of healing architecture.
Textiles in architecture has throughout history provided unique possibilities of designing flexible and spatially interesting environments; and furthermore has this manifold material improved and elevated the architectural experience with tactile character, sensuality and distinctive aesthetic qualities, incomparable to other building materials. While these characteristic qualities of textiles are likely to improve the clinical and institutional environment of modern hospitals, the hygienic concerns are strictly governing and the architectural potential of textiles are often not exploited in full. However, with new directions and innovations within the field of smart textiles, future materials has been introduced that with state-of-the-art technology can be applied in hospitals while even improving the hygiene. Departing from this on-going shift in our contextual and cultural awareness of textiles, we will examine and question how this may effect our future understanding of textiles in regards to hospital environments?
Relating to important moments in design history we seek to unfold and articulate the traditional qualities of textiles, translating and resettling them within the vision of healing architecture. By examining the past, we may learn how to exploit the new potential of textiles in creating a future, where textiles may find new applications in hospital design and contribute in supporting hospitalised patients’ healing process.
The value of a new evidence-based design approach to healthcare architecture is described and the range of evidence available introduced. The paper then focuses on the challenge of applying empirical research knowledge to a creative design process. Examples are given of the results of such an approach and of how we can develop design tools to transfer complex scientific knowledge into a “designerly way of knowing”.
Understanding the physical characteristics of the indoor environment that affect human health and wellbeing is the key requirement underpinning the beneficial design of a healthcare facility (HCF). We reviewed and summarized physical factors of the indoor environment reported to affect human health and wellbeing in HCFs. Altogether, 214 publications were selected for this review. According to the literature, there is strong scientific evidence to show that following indoor environmental factors have beneficial effects for all user groups when appropriately designed or implemented: the acoustic environment, ventilation and air conditioning systems, the thermal environment, the visual environment (e.g. lighting, and views of nature), ergonomic conditions and furniture. In contrast, the effect of special layouts and room type and floor coverings may be beneficial for one group and detrimental for another. Some of the physical factors may, in themselves, directly promote or hinder health and wellbeing, but the factors can also have numerous indirect impacts by influencing the behaviour, actions and interactions of patients, their families and the staff members. The findings of this research enable a good understanding of the different physical factors of the indoor environment on health and wellbeing and provide a practical resource for those responsible for the design and operation of the facilities as well as researchers investigating these factors. However, more studies are needed in order to inform the design of optimally beneficial indoor environments in HCFs for all user groups.
The past few decades have seen a rapid rise in the popularity of studies addressing the cognitive and neural correlates of aesthetic judgments in humans. However, despite this growing trend, and despite the fact that artists have, over the centuries, exploited each and every one of the human senses for their communicative purposes, very little research has investigated this important topic from the point of view of the sense of touch. In this review, we highlight for the first time a number of the key characteristics that an aesthetics of touch ought to have. In particular, starting from the artists’ and the visual aesthetics points of view, we summarize those empirical findings relevant to the tactile modality. We suggest that while tactile aesthetics has many similarities with visual aesthetics there are also a number of important differences. In particular, the hedonic experience of touch appears to be more intimate, active (requiring the involvement of body movement), and “primitive” than that generated by visual stimuli. Finally, we show that a widespread network of brain areas appears to be involved in the various different aspects of tactile aesthetic experience.
Objectives:
This study compares the Social Engagement and Interactive Occupation of residents with dementia in two Irish nursing homes, before and after conversion to a household model environment. The changes were an open plan design and a functioning unit kitchen, supported by a homemaker role and operational policies which reduced task-based work in favour of person-centred care offering choice.
Method:
A snapshot observation method was used to obtain quantitative data of resident activity using the Assessment Tool for Occupation and Social Engagement (ATOSE). Residents were assessed for four hours, on seven different weekdays, over a six-week period both pre- and post-renovation. The exception to this was the assessment of the traditional model unit (TMU) for Nursing Home 1 which was reduced to four days due to the early start of the building work.
Results:
The results were consistent for both nursing homes and data were aggregated. Residents spent more time in the communal living spaces and were more likely to be active and engaged in the household model units (HMUs) compared to the TMUs. Using the independent t-test, these changes were found to be highly significant (p < 0.001).
Conclusion:
Creating an HMU increased the Interactive Occupation and Social Engagement of residents in the communal areas of the two nursing homes. The physical environment change, in conjunction with supportive staff procedures and organizational initiatives, improved the well-being of residents with dementia. The outcomes must be viewed in context with financial implications.
This report surveys and evaluates the scientific research on evidence-based healthcare design and extracts its implications for designing better and safer hospitals.
It builds on a literature review conducted by researchers in 2004.
Research teams conducted a new and more exhaustive search for rigorous empirical studies that link the design of hospital physical environments with healthcare outcomes. The review followed a two-step process, including an extensive search for existing literature and a screening of each identified study for the relevance and quality of evidence.
This review found a growing body of rigorous studies to guide healthcare design, especially with respect to reducing the frequency of hospital-acquired infections. Results are organized according to three general types of outcomes: patient safety, other patient outcomes, and staff outcomes. The findings further support the importance of improving outcomes for a range of design characteristics or interventions, including single-bed rooms rather than multibed rooms, effective ventilation systems, a good acoustic environment, nature distractions and daylight, appropriate lighting, better ergonomic design, acuity-adaptable rooms, and improved floor layouts and work settings. Directions for future research are also identified.
The state of knowledge of evidence-based healthcare design has grown rapidly in recent years. The evidence indicates that well-designed physical settings play an important role in making hospitals safer and more healing for patients, and better places for staff to work.
How do people react to the visual character of their surroundings? What can planners do to improve the aesthetic quality of these surroundings? Too often in environmental design is misunderstood as only a minor concern, dependent on volatile taste and thus undefinable. Yet a substantial body of research indicates the importance of visual quality in the environment to the public and has uncovered systematic patterns of human response to visual attributes of the built environment. With information on the subject normally scattered between disciplines, this book provides a vital service in bringing together classic and new contributions by distinguished workers in the field.
There are good reasons to believe that furniture designers can play an important role in the design of appropriate caring environments and thus contribute to the care that is provided. Designers are usually engaged by manufacturers that develop furniture for public procurement and a market for elderly consumers but without being able to learn from those who spend their everyday lives in these environments. This paper is based on industrial design and presents a study that explores the relationships between people and furniture in nursing homes. Thematic interviews were carried out with residents and personnel, in total 21 participants. A go-along method was utilized in parts of the interviews with the residents. The empirical study was carried out in three nursing homes in Stockholm. The results prove that elderly people strive for a sense of home in their private rooms in contrast to shared rooms and that the perspectives on furniture differ between the elderly people and the personnel. The conclusion is that understanding the role of furniture at nursing homes can help to reinforce the identity of elderly residents and their needs of continuity and social and existential safety. The recommendations are to involve the experiences of elderly people in the design processes and to make more informed furniture investment decisions for nursing homes.
Gottfried Semper, the nineteenth-century German architect and art historian, influenced a generation of Central European followers at the turn of the twentieth century with his notion of the textile origins of building. His theories were particularly resonant in Vienna, where the movement to reform the applied arts centered on textiles in a variety of ways. Textiles were at the heart of Austria-Hungary's imperial legacy in the form of richly embroidered court costumes and ecclesiastical vestments as well as in the traditional needlework produced throughout the diverse Habsburg lands. Modern architects and designers were motivated not only to design cloth and clothing, but to express characteristics of the textile in their buildings and interior designs as well. While architects such as Otto Wagner in Vienna and Ödön Lechner in Budapest "dressed" their buildings in decorative textile-like façades, younger modernists, including Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos, interpreted Semper's ideas more broadly, understanding their application to the design of interior spaces in innovative ways. This paper posits a new methodological approach to the study of Viennese art and design during this period—one that uses the textile, as it was understood by Semper, as a structure, or theoretical framework, for sifting through the modern movement's many puzzling contradictions, seen for example in the opposing views of Hoffmann and Loos.
Objective
This study addressed older adults’ psycho–social needs in relation to assisted living shared spaces. It examined part of a Social Space Attachment Model that hypothesized that assisted living designs that match residents’ previous homes lead to greater life satisfaction.
Research Design
Residents at 11 assisted living facilities were interviewed. Information about demographics, psychological and physical status, ratings and use of social spaces, and previous homes was gathered. Lobbies, lounges, and dining rooms at each site were assessed.
Analysis
Means and percentages were used to compare furnishing styles, colors, and accessories at previous homes and assisted living facilities. Regression and correlation analyses were used to determine relationships for private, personal and homelike ratings, formality match, use of spaces, and psycho–social variables with residents’ life satisfaction scores.
Key Findings
Assisted living interiors were more formal and used different colors and less personal accessories than previous homes. Residents rated social spaces as not private, not personal, and not homelike. Residents with higher life satisfaction scores were more likely to live in facilities where formality was similar to their previous homes, spend time in the lobbies, and rate them as personal.
Conclusions
For older adults to become attached to and use assisted living social spaces, interior designs must relate to past experiences. Designs should usually include semi–formal or informal traditional styles, more familiar colors, personal accessories, and opportunities for privacy.
This paper presents a model for the process underlying similarities and differences in environmental experience. According to the model, repeated exposure to regularities in the environment influences the development of internal knowledge structures. Discrepancies from the knowledge structures influence emotional appraisals. In Experiment 1, using measure of goodness of example and familiarity for knowledge structures, and measures of preferences and interest for emotional appraisals, we had first year architecture and students from other disciplines judge a set of single family houses-half of ‘high’ style, and half of ‘popular’ style. In a second experiment, two groups of the same architecture students at the end of their third year made judgements of goodness of example and preference for the same set of houses. In the first experiment, the two groups displayed similar knowledge structures for the homes, but they differed in the way their emotional appraisals related to discrepancies from the shared knowledge structure. In the second experiment, the goodness of example judgements indicated that little change had occurred in the students' knowledge structures but preference for ‘popular’ style houses had decreased significantly. These results are discussed in terms of the model of the processes that produce similarities and differences in experience.
To examine the proportion of time spent in three levels of mobility (lying, sitting, and standing or walking) by a cohort of hospitalized older veterans as measured by validated wireless accelerometers.
A prospective, observational cohort study.
One hundred fifty-bed Department of Veterans Affairs hospital.
Forty-five hospitalized medical patients, aged 65 and older who were not delirious, did not have dementia, and were able to walk in the 2 weeks before admission were eligible.
Wireless accelerometers were attached to the thigh and ankle of patients for the first 7 days after admission or until hospital discharge, whichever came first. The mean proportion of time spent lying, sitting, and standing or walking was determined for each hour after hospital admission using a previously validated algorithm.
Forty-five male patients (mean age 74.2) with a mean length of stay of 5.1 days generated 2,592 one-hour periods of data. A baseline functional assessment indicated that 35 (77.8%) study patients were willing and able to walk a short distance independently. No patient remained in bed the entire measured hospital stay, but on average, 83% of the measured hospital stay was spent lying in bed. The average amount of time that any one individual spent standing or walking ranged from a low of 0.2% to a high of 21%, with a median of 3%, or 43 minutes per day.
This is the first study to continuously monitor mobility levels early during a hospital stay. On average, older hospitalized patients spent most of their time lying in bed, despite an ability to walk independently.
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