How much architecture does your mental health tolerate?

A healing environment functions easily as a concept that totalizes the discourse on care architecture; although it may not yet be clear in what way the spatial context could help the healing process, still the idea covers the whole field and matches the most corporate building developments. Even the great Charles Jencks felt shame when asked whether a healing environment existed: he was unable to answer the question. The giant in the history of postmodern architecture and initiator of more than thirty Maggie’s centres designed by the most famous architects, he was shying away, knowing full well that architecture is certainly not fit to heal cancer-suffering patients in any way. The parallel with mental health care certainly holds. Asking a patient in psychiatric crisis care about what a healing environment could mean in the context of the seclusion room, she answered – I paraphrase: ‘I don’t recall how I got in there, let alone what the space looks like, the only thing I need in such a moment is a bottle of milk’. In my lecture I will question the concept of a healing environment in reference to recent architecture projects in Belgium and present totally different stakes in architecture that surfaced in talks with psychiatrists, managers, staff, and patients.