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SPOTLIGHT LANDSCAPE CONNECTING By John Loomis | Photos by Tom Fox EAST TO WEST Bringing home landscape lessons learned overseas to maximize healing environments he industry is catching on to what those in the East have known for centuries — landscapes are integral to the healing and recovery process. And new innovations have emerged throughout the years, such as community gardens in hospitals and contemplative outdoor spaces in hospice settings. While this movement of applying Eastern approaches to healthcare landscape design continues and grows, the question is what else can be learned to create inviting, warm landscapes that contribute to wellness and not just treat disease? Landscape architecture firm SWA Group has found the answer to this question — in part — while working for the last 20 years with Half Century More Co., or HCM, a developer and operator of senior living facilities and assisted living facilities in Japan. The country has the world's highest elderly population according to the latest available data, with 29,010,000 senior citizens as of Oct. 1, 2009. With the elderly population increasing in the U.S., much can be T Careful planning of paths creates alternate routes between different activity sites within a facility. learned from our friends in the East. Through HCM projects, it was discovered that the site itself drives the direction for development and ensures the best placement of the facilities to maximize the benefits of the landscape to the health of the patients. The common thread across the designs of all institutions is a strong commitment to honoring the existing topography and landscape surroundings of each site. This typically brings in an abundance of cultural and natural forms to 14 Medical Construction & Design | November/December 2013 the surrounding landscape and creates spaces and views that support healing through access to nature and community. The following are lessons learned over the years: Lesson #1: Landscape is integral to healing Japanese people are taking part in a new approach to healthcare — forest therapy. This method, Shinrin-yoku, involves spending periods of time immersed in nature and has already shown a dramatically positive effect on those who partake. Many found significantly lower levels of stress, decreased heart rate and blood pressure, decreased fatigue and depression and improved immune function. In one study, similar results were found by time spent in suburban parks for days after the experience itself. In most healthcare settings, patients spend more than 90 percent of their time indoors, even when opportunities to go outside exist. This leaves a design challenge for landscape architects to create outdoor environments that invite patients to linger. As healthcare architect Robin Guenther of Perkins+Will put it, good healthcare landscape design "encourages you to walk through it or push somebody in a wheelchair through it; the idea of a journey makes it a destination." www.mcdmag.com