ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN
Sunlight’s role in recovery and wellbeing highlighted
Architect, Richard Mazuch, founder and champion of IBI TH!NK, the IBI Group’s ‘in-house’ research and development group, and an advocate of evidence-based design in ‘creating innovations that positively impact the psychology and physiology of patient groups’, examines the many positive therapeutic benefits – both physical and mental – of ensuring that modern healthcare buildings, and the patients being treated within them, get sufficient sunlight.
Some of the varied, and in some cases unusual, edifices used historically to ensure that patients got sufficient exposure to sunlight.
As we were about to enter the summer of 2019, the hottest of the four temperate seasons, New Scientist issued two magazine editions – on 16 March and 1 June – with leading front page ‘anchor articles’ entitled ‘Let the sun shine in – Why blocking out the sun is damaging your health’, and ‘Light up your life – How getting more daylight can transform your health’. Little did we know that the weather stations would monitor the most extreme weather ever recorded in the UK. Both these articles were authored by Linda Geddes, author of Chasing the Sun, and The New Science of Sunlight and how it shapes our bodies and minds. In essence, the articles investigated and informed the reader about the conflict between applying sunscreen to prevent skin cancer, and sunlight deprivation doing more harm to health than good. Much supporting and compelling evidence was investigated in both articles. Further to Linda Geddes’ considerable
contribution in this field, Richard Hobday, an authority on sunlight and health in the building environment, as well as a specialist in solar technology and energy conservation, has contributed much to this debate. He has authored two popular books on the subject, entitled The Healing Sun: Sunlight and Health in the 21st Century and The Light Revolution: Health Architecture and the Sun, providing valuable insights, historical background, research, and evidence, on how to promote health in the built environment.
Clinicians’ concerns Today clinicians are increasingly concerned about the application of sunblock on our skin – effectively our ‘Body Envelope’ – impacting on Vitamin D deficiencies, dental bone growth, prevention of autoimmune diseases, cancers, cardiovascular diseases, depression, anxiety, sleep loss, etc. as well as the harmful chemicals contained within
the sunscreens themselves. As healthcare architects and designers, we must be equally concerned about the building envelopes we design, and the sunblock armoury of devices and specifications we have developed to minimise solar ingress and heat gain. Beyond this, and on a macro level, healthcare masterplanners have to be clearly cognisant of the evidence-based research benefits related to health recovery when defining aspect and orientation on new developments. Eleven research studies identify the benefits of daylight to the recovery of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) or Bipolar patients. Also, Benedetti et al discovered that east-facing rooms reduced stay by 3.67 days.
Biophilic design
Biophilic design is an innovative and rapidly growing design tool that defines the essential dialogue between humans and the natural world. Our buildings
October 2019 Health Estate Journal 79
All sketches, drawn by, and used courtesy of, Richard Mazuch
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