HOW CAN CONSUMERS BENEFIT FROM THERAPEUTIC ENVIRONMENTS?

Why is it that, after thirty years or more of productive healthcare design research, relatively few healthcare facilities have become the therapeutic built environments they could be — environments that improve medical outcomes and quality of life? Authors of the papers in this issue of the Journal of Architectural Planning and Research (JAPR) consider these issues in terms of information gaps between researchers, intermediate consumers who commission and design heathcare facilities, and end-user patients, staff, families, and visitors who use them. Research results presented here converge to show, first, that therapeutic environments can foster healthier lives for the people in them. A second group of papers demonstrates how collaborative design efforts by researchers, intermediate consumers (as clients and designers), and end consumers (as patients and other users) can lead to exemplary healthcare environments.