GARDENS LUCIANO MONZA – ARCHITECT, ARQUISALUD, ARGENTINA
Utilising biophilia and therapeutic gardens
Luciano Monza, former president and current board member of Asociacion Argentina de Arquitectura e Ingenieria Hospitalaria (AADAIH), discusses the importance of therapeutic gardens in a modern hospital setting.
The term biophilia refers to the human need to be in contact with nature and other forms of life. According to Moya and Cedrés de Bello1 “…biophilia … originates from the Greek, ‘bios’ life and ‘philia’ love, literally meaning love for life.” They explain that the term was originally defined by Erich Fromm (1973), and afterwards developed by Edward Osborne Wilson (1984): “According to Wilson’s theory, people need to be in contact with nature since this is essential for psychological development. Satisfying this vital desire is equally important to the fact of establishing relationships with other people.” While therapeutic gardens are not the
only possible application of the biophilia concept in a building, they play a very important role as part of the strategies to provide a response to the need for a relationship between interior and exterior and between built environment and natural environment.
Background Gardens, whether therapeutic and non- therapeutic, have had a significant place in hospitals throughout history. However, in the 20th century, they ceased to occupy a space in the project and in the reality of health care institutions. Cooper Marcus and Barnes (1995)
argue that as early as the Middle Ages, the concept of therapeutic garden emerged and that hospitals and monasteries had a recreational courtyard where residents found shelter, sun, and shadow.
NYBG explain that in medieval hospitals (12th to 15th centuries), more herbs and spices were grown in the hospitals than were purchased outside, and that gardens were one of the main elements of the hospital for three reasons: l They provided plants for food and medicines.
l They provided good smells. l Working in the garden was a therapeutic activity.
But even in the hygienist theories of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as a consequence of the overcrowding in the cities produced by the industrial revolution, hospitals were conceived with an important articulation between the exterior and the interior. Natural light and sunlight were highly valued. For Campari (2009), the fundamental ideas of the
Luciano Monza
Luciano Monza is a former president and current board member of Asociacion Argentina de Arquitectura e Ingenieria Hospitalaria (AADAIH) and has more than 30 years of experience in the planning, design, and management of health facilities in the public and private sectors. He is a PhD candidate and architect, a specialist in health facilities from UBA, and a specialist in social sciences and health from CEDES FLACSO. Luciano is also director of the postgraduate course on Health Buildings Project
AADAIH FADU UBA and a postgraduate lecturer in Buenos Aires, Barcelona, La Plata, Porto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro, and Sucre.
IFHE DIGEST 2024
hygienist thinking of the late 19th century in relation to disease as a social phenomenon, extended in the city of Buenos Aires to various fields of action, including the landscape intervention of green areas in hospital institutions, articulating a discourse and a practice between social, health, and public space. He mentions as significant events the epidemic diseases of cholera (1869) and yellow fever (1871) that occurred in Buenos Aires, which raised questions about the hygienic conditions in which the city found itself. But with the increasing technification of medical treatments and buildings (mechanical ventilation and artificial lighting), the concept of hospital as a healing machine and human body as a machine to be repaired in a workshop (with the consequent loss of patient’s subjectivity), and functional relations as the determining element (if not practically the only one) for the project, hospitals began to have increasingly compact and extended buildings, and an increasing number of spaces without natural lighting and without contact with the outside. Cooper Marcus and Barnes (1995)
explain that in the 20th century, the large- scale construction of hospitals, tall high- rise development, and the prioritisation of cost-efficiency led to the disappearance of gardens except in chronic patient hospitals: “… the therapeutic garden and its potential healing benefits have been
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