Healthcare for all in emerging countries: a preliminary investigation of facilities in Kolkata, India

Introduction. India is one of the five countries with the lowest public health spending levels: the private medical services are one of the most developed fields, meanwhile public health ones are totally inadequate with the most number of health facilities concentrated in cities, where only the 25% of the population lives. Public facilities are mainly made up of primary level and not well distributed on the territories, so they do not guarantee accessibility to a wide sample of population, who live in rural areas of India. Methodology. Starting from the analysis of three different health care levels in the Indian context, the research team developed a meta-project that considers all the current criticisms and the Indian customs through a flexible layout that responds to the healthcare needs of population. Result and Discussion. The research work is aimed to develop a meta-project that considers all the current criticisms and the Indian customs through flexible layouts that responds to the healthcare needs of population. Conclusion. The innovation of the research work is to develop the hygienic aspects, the layout and the distribution, the sub-division of the medical functions through the Indian culture and the needs of the country. The choice of lowly technologies permits to promote the usage of local materials, their maintenance and skills for creating a virtuous economic system

Bridging therapeutic landscapes to architecture. International experience-based design strategies for healthcare infrastructures

Background and aim: in Italy, many cases studies of therapeutic green spaces are built into healthcare infrastructures, but only some of these follow the principles of healing gardens. Scientific literature and international case studies offer many contributions of evidence relating to how therapeutic green spaces can support traditional treatments. The paper analyze the relationship between indoor and outdoor spaces and healing gardens' features; the main research questions were: "Can we synthetize experience-based design strategies for therapeutic green spaces and healing gardens? How can we prioritize the most relevant ones for the healthcare infrastructures?" Methods: Research Method is divided into three different steps: 1st case studies' selection; 2nd case studies' analysis, and 3rd quali-quantitative comparative matrix. Results: ten case studies were identifiedfour of them have the therapeutic green space on the ground floor,despite of the other six having the healing garden on the rooftop.The best experience-based design strategies for the therapeutic green spaces or healing gardens development were identified from the previous comparison matrix, and divided into A.Safety, Security and Privacy; B.Accessibility; C.Physical and Emotional Comfort; D.Positive distraction; E.Engagement with Nature; F.Maintenance and Aesthetics; and G.Sustainability. Conclusions: The results obtained from the comparative matrix are qualitative and quantitative design elements in terms of type of element / space, percentage, perimeter, area, number, materiality, shape, color, among others. The quali-quantitative matrix is a useful and practical tool that allows the designer to have a base of design guidelines that can be later applied to the proposal of new therapeutic gardens