![Sample our Health and Social Care journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5938/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Health-Social-Care.jpg"})
Abstract
This paper explores design students’ proposals for a redesign of the interior of a room of silence at the SUS hospital in Malmö. Reflection and existential meaning-making are discussed in relation to the material culture of design, and more specifically in relation to four different themes found among the students’ proposals: nature as common symbolic framework and salutary force; lighting creating a visual and spatial ambience for retreat; interactive objects allowing ritualised activities; and the presence and absence of religious symbols. In this paper, we argue that architecture and design more profoundly could support people with varying existential viewpoints when it comes to providing religiously and culturally shared public spaces for dealing with existentially crucial moments. We also argue for an interdisciplinary research approach to healing environments, where existential meaning-making is included in the overall discussion of the design of health care architecture.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the year-three students from the Industrial Design Programme, Bachelor level, at the Faculty of Engineering (LTH) at Lund University and hospital chaplain Corinna Friedl for their participation, our colleagues Eja Pedersen and Mattias Kärrholm for contributing valuable comments on this article as it neared completion and Graham Bowers for proofreading the text, as well as the reviewers and editors of Mortality.
Disclosure Statement
The funding sources had no involvement in the study design, the collection, analysis and interpretation of data or the writing and submitting of this article. The submitted article has not been published elsewhere, and it has not been submitted simultaneously for publication. The first author has secured permission to reproduce the submitted illustrations.
Notes
1 These quotes are taken from the online document Fact Sheet: Meditation Room. Retrieved 7 November Citation2012, from http://visit.un.org/wcm/content/site/visitors/lang/en/meditation_room/.
2 The Swedish term is Stilla rum, a term that probably derives from the German Raum der Stille. For the history, architecture and design of multi-faith spaces, such as rooms of silence, see RIBA (Citation2011/2012, p. 43), Brand (Citation2012, pp. 221–222) and Crompton (Citation2013, pp. 475–478).
3 See also: Multi-Faith Spaces – Symptoms and Agents of Religious and Social Change. Retrieved September 9, Citation2013, from http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/architecture/research/mfs/.
4 After the course, the hospital chaplaincy decided to apply for further funding in order to implement certain elements of the students’ proposals. They received 250 000 SEK (approximately 38 950 USD) from Malmö Förskönings- och Planteringsförening, and the inauguration of the remade room took place on 23 January 2014.
5 Concerning the assessment of creative processes in art, architecture and design see for example Gordon (Citation2004), Cowan (Citation2006) and Sandin (Citation2011).
6 The concept of nature can be described in a number of ways. In this text, we follow a common usage of the term in the area of landscape architecture, where nature includes wilderness, cultural landscapes and gardens (cf. Adevi, Citation2012, p. 17).
7 Philosopher Levinas (Citation1987, p. 116) even goes so far as to trace the phenomenological grounds of religious ritual back to the touch and the caress.