Therapeutic Landscape as a Healthcare Facility in Egypt: Design and Evaluation Process

Mahmoud Ahmed Zaki,Alaa Zeinelabedin Abdelhafeez,Shahira Sayed Sharafuddin,Hosny Ahmed Dewer

doi:10.47607/ijresm.2020.385

Mahmoud Ahmed Zaki, Alaa Zeinelabedin Abdelhafeez + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.47607/ijresm.2020.385

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Abstract

Outdoor natural environments are well proven to have psychological, physical, and social benefits, particularly those attached to healthcare facilities. Despite that, the Egyptian Codes devoid of data related to the design of such gardens, which hinders the design process and the inclusion of these spaces within health care facilities. Thus, this paper seeks to reach a set of considerations for the design of different types of therapeutic gardens by summarizing the findings and recommendations of some evidence-based design (EBD) research and post-occupancy evaluations (POEs). Post-occupancy evaluations lack to determining the percentage of achieving the design principles in the garden. Therefore, in addition to the behavioral and visual observations to evaluate Children's Cancer Hospital garden in Egypt (CCHE), an audit tool was integrated to combine the advantages of audit tools and POEs. With this merging, we can reach a steady form of post-occupancy evaluations of pediatric cancer hospital’s gardens to be a guide for future researches and landscape architects.

Highlights

Man has believed in the healing benefits of nature for those suffering from psychological and physical problems for thousands of years
The American Horticultural Therapy Association (AHTA) has divided the natural environments that aid in the healing process into several different types, according to user groups and garden design programs
The terms intended to improve health outcomes through spending time in, the American Horticultural Therapy Association developed definitions that explain the difference between them Table 1 [12]

Summary

Introduction

Man has believed in the healing benefits of nature for those suffering from psychological and physical problems for thousands of years The beginning of this belief was from the ancient Egyptian civilization through the early Asian, Greek, and Romanian, and to the monastic monasteries in the middle Ages. This interest continued to the beginning of the twentieth century, and it began to diminish as a result of the preference for functional efficiency and priority of financial gain. In Egypt, some of the therapeutic garden designs, when investigating, you hardly discover whether it serves frail elderly, psychiatric, Alzheimer's, or cancer patients It mostly does not meet all (psychological, physical, and social) needs of all users (patients, visitors, or staff)

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