THE IMPACT OF THE ISSUE OF WELLNESS ON THE DESIGN OF THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT AND ARCHITECTURE

Abstract

The built environment has a profound impact on the wellness of individuals at the building and neighborhood scale. Existing tools that define the relationship between wellness and the built environment are quantitative and limited in their scope of understanding. The scope of the issue of wellness extends beyond the building scale into the larger urban environment. A paradigmatic shift in the understanding of wellness and design is necessary from a pathogenic to a salutogenic approach. This paper examines the existing relationship between wellness and the built environment, and re-evaluates the latter based on salutogenic principles. Greenery, social spaces, sense of place and coherence of expression are proposed to have greater impact on the both the design of the built environment and wellness. Drawing primarily on peer-reviewed literature in the fields of health, social sciences, environmental psychology and evolutionary biology, this dissertation outlines the influences of each factor on aspects of physical and mental wellness. The physical expression of greenery, social spaces, sense of place and coherence of expression in the six chosen case studies and their implications on the spatial and formal aspects of the architecture are analyzed. Greenery and social spaces are recurring elements in the six projects due to their ease of manipulation and implementation. In the majority of the six projects, both factors play the major role of providing the initial design concept. Much of the architectural design is heavily influenced by the two factors. They also have a more direct and profound influence on the wellness of individuals as compared to sense of place and coherence of expression. These factors are difficult to implement as they are largely dependent on how users interact with the site and architecture of the building. These processes take time and are beyond the control of the architect. Consequently, designing for a sense of place and coherence of expression might not yield definitive results.