A Narrative Essay on the Relationship Between the Biopsychosocial Model of Health and the Built Environment

Abstract

A correspondence between a Designer and a Neurologist, presented as a narrative essay on the relationship between the biopsychosocial model of health and the built environment. The discussion addresses how architecture, specifically that of the hospital, can apply scientific principles to understand how designed environments shape health behaviours and outcomes, bridging the gap between medical treatment and the architectural framework that supports it. It examines the benefits of utilising design as the ‘third carer’—enabling it to actively support a patient’s medical team (first carers) and family and friends (second carers) facilitating nurturing interactions and anticipating the needs of its occupants—exploring its potential to create inclusive clinical spaces that are adaptable, sensorially engaging, domestic in scale, colour and tactility, well-lit, acoustically controlled, and permeable to the natural world. The scientific understanding of illness has moved beyond strictly molecular and surgical models to a realisation that health is a combination of biological, psychological, and social factors. Therefore, the essay investigates the notion of the hospital as a tool for urban regeneration and the connections between the socio-economic and environmental factors that are vital to the success of medical treatment and the larger goal of health creation, exploring how our understanding of these connections can help re-imagine a built environment with the power to give users greater agency, better care and more control, enhancing health, welfare and quality of life.