Senses and modern health/care environments: exploring interdisciplinary and international opportunities

Design is a pressing issue in healthcare. In the face of growing critiques of current healthcare and care environments, examples of successful healthcare design from history can provide inspiration for change. Even more opportunities emerge if we consider historical examples of 'good' and 'bad' design in terms of how hospitals felt rather than only how they looked. Smells, sounds, foods, temperatures, air flow and furniture all play a part in places such as hospitals, hospices, care homes and GP surgeries. They play a role in making 'therapeutic' spaces or they can contribute to poor design. 

This project will use the senses as a new way of approaching the history of health and care environments for the benefit of historians, designers and users, including workers, visitors and patients. 

We will develop international and interdisciplinary networks, which will lay the foundations for ways to improve healthcare spaces for everyone.