Anybody who thinks that interior design is all about what painting to hang up, what wallpaper to choose, and what table or chair to specify, has got it wrong. Designing a good interior goes much further than taste and the choice of colour or materials. How do people experience and use the space, and how can the interior design support them in that?
Taking the user into account has always been at the core of my designs.
That applies to all sectors, whether it be offices and shops or nursing homes, hospitals and psychiatric institutions. How do you get that one customer to cross the threshold? How can staff work as efficiently and effectively as possible? And how can you reduce stress among patients and the pressure of work on medical staff?
Those are the questions I ask myself. And in fact the biggest question I ask myself as an architect is: for whom am I making this? Or as writer and poet Maya Angelou puts it:
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel
Healthcare and nursing cater for the most vulnerable users of all. How can we help precisely those individuals who require care? How can we make the everyday surroundings of the elderly and invalid as pleasant as possible with the best possible care? Answering this question is rewarding work. Designing the interior of a hospital is not only about walls, floors, furniture and reception desks, but also about daylight, colour and the deployment of real greenery and views of nature. For it has been scientifically proven that our surroundings benefit human health and boost recovery.
EGM architecten therefore applies Evidence Based Design, Healing Environment, Planetree, Healing Art and environmental psychology in our designs so that we can achieve the best possible result.
An example of an interior design in which the principles of Planetree and Healing Environment have been applied is the Reinier de Graaf Hospital in Delft. All patient rooms in this hospital have a view of the surroundings. To make that outside world visible indoors, we designed wall-sized prints of the same views and placed them at strategic points in the hospital. Research has shown that recognizable landscapes are reassuring and lower stress, thus contributing to a speedier recovery of the patient. The recognizable images all refer to the character of the area served by the hospital: metropolitan, Delft, polders, greenhouses and the beach. With the new building for the Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, we are currently in the process of selecting a number of nature photographers who will be invited to make proposals to exhibit ‘nature’ in various parts of this academic hospital.
Interior means much more than taste. Without an interior there is no building, and all we have is an empty box that fills the city
It has been proven that daylight benefits the healing process. But sometimes no daylight is possible, and then as an interior architect I devise ways of simulating daylight. For example, by making use of biodynamic illumination, which simulates and boosts the rhythm of day and night and everything in between. We apply this in psychiatric institutions. During the day there is more blue light, and that increases the production of cortisol, which stimulates alertness, and that in turn means that patients don’t fall as often as they otherwise would. Warm evening light stimulates the production of melatonin, which benefits sleep. The result is a natural rhythm of day and night, essential for psychiatric patients.
Making choices that support the working processes, responding to individual requirements: those are the requirements and standards for every user, from the cleaner to the CEO. It’s about the people in the building and how they perceive and experience the building from inside out. Identifying with the user: that’s what I do most as an interior architect at EGM. What’s in it for them? Interiors are very important. Interiors are about much more than taste. Without an interior, the building remains an empty box that fills the city.
World Interiors Day. For the website, click here.