Reinventing the Wellness Center

Abstract

This thesis will attempt to heighten the level of wellbeing in all of us through architectural intervention. More specifically, it will study and hopefully add to our understanding of how the built environment enhances our wellbeing. The vehicle that will be used to study how the environment can directly affect our wellbeing will be Complementary and Alternative Medical (CAM) wellness centers. Expectations of standards of health have exponentially increased past current remedies and health is being recognized by many as being more than just freedom from disease. Health is being considered the soundness of mind, body and spirit. Since architects (and the buildings they design) are the settings for these environments, it is time that architects evaluate whether the current healing environments are keeping up with today’s standards of care. Increasing just as much as the expectations of standards of care is our exposure to disease and illness from unnatural processes that surround us. Everything in our lives today has become industrialized. The food we eat, the medicines we take, and the jobs we perform are all becoming unnatural. There is a disconnect from nature that is creating a mess of health problems. When it comes to fixing these problems, many people are choosing to find alternative and naturalistic means of bringing back the wellness they had at child birth. This thesis seeks to explore how architecture can improve the environments that foster wellness and to imagine the creation of a new wellness center that brings together all forms of Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Can architects create settings that cultivate much needed collaboration among CAM professionals and patients to further the potential of CAM to produce wellness among individuals and communities, and can they help bolster initiatives that get the community involved in producing research results on the effectiveness of CAM? The implementation of a CAM wellness center into an existing community is the basis for this thesis. It will seek ways of increasing Complementary and Alternative Medicine’s potential to produce healthy communities.