A New Literature Review Updates the Field

September 2, 2022 Hank Hancock

Open books laid out across in an overlapping array

A recent literature review appeared quietly last year in a clinical medical journal. In “Evidence-based Art in the Hospital,” 30 original sources are gathered and summarized to yield suggestions for making art selections in patient rooms and in social areas. This list of sources includes some of the fresh evidence that has been moving the field in new directions and broadening its scope of inquiry.

Practitioners in the field would benefit from reading through these sources as a sort of primer, as it is both comprehensive and definitive.

Two Fields: Arts in Health :: Architecture & Design

August 5, 2019 Hank Hancock

Movement of Vaulted Chambers, 1915, Paul Klee.

Our topic – the role of healing art design in healthcare settings, and in service of public health – falls squarely between two related fields that are need of acknowledging and addressing one another.

Original Questions and New Questions

April 17, 2019 Hank Hancock

Edward Hopper, Woman Smoking, Looking Out Window, 1940.

The practice of evidence-based design, as it is defined and credentialed, as its history is told, its storehouse of knowledge kept at the Center for Health Design, famously begins with a single study by psychologist Roger Ulrich. Having published previously in environmental psychology, specifically on the subjects of “visual landscapes,” he made a discovery in 1984 that helped to create an entirely new field of study.

It's Time to Update "A Guide to Evidence-Based Art"

February 4, 2019 Hank Hancock

The “Guide to Evidence-Based Art” was published in 2008. In ten years, a lot of new data, new questions, and new ideas have made it clear that the guide must be updated. The consequences are real.

This guide acts as a sort of specification system for hospital systems and architects who seek qualified professional art consultants to outfit their new spaces with healing art programs. The guide does not set rules, but it is still treated as a sort of rule-book, entirely contrary to the first principle of evidence-based design.

An Introduction to Evidence Based Design

January 6, 2019 Hank Hancock

"Florence Nightingale" ward, St. Thomas's Hospital, adopting the principals of Florence Nightingale, considered the first to practice “evidence-based design.”

In the field of healthcare design, where decisions are made by hospital administrators, architects, and the teams they recruit to launch and direct expensive building and renovation projects, it wasn’t always the case that design decisions were made by first deliberately looking at what available evidence would have to say about this or that design choice.

Design for Dignity

November 4, 2018 Hank Hancock

This photo shows a bronze statue called "Raise Up", part of the display at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a new memorial to honor thousands of people killed in lynchings, April 23, 2018, in Montgomery, Ala. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

So here’s where it all begins.

The concept of dignity recurs often in the discourse of healing design. The theory of supportive design names dignity explicitly in as part of its formulation. Recent work on the concept of healing - as opposed to curing - also identify dignity as one of several as defining qualities.

And the meaning of dignity itself deserves some attention.