The Crown Sky Garden, on the 11th floor of the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, is a 5,000-square-foot area for play and contemplation and the second healing garden completed last year by Mikyoung Kim. Kim, a landscape architect, is regarded as an artful weaver of nature and sculpture, according to an article in The New York Times. In the Q&A, Kim talks about the philosophy and process behind a healing garden.
NYT: How do you define a healing garden?
Kim: It allows for us to reboot. I think that a lot of our public environments don’t really offer us that.
NYT: Certainly not in hospitals.
Kim: Overall, a kind of stress management happens. It’s something we all know intuitively. We go to a place that’s quiet and inviting, and we can just feel our body relaxing. I think at the highest level, hospital administrators are really beginning to believe that design matters and they’re infusing a kind of humanity into these clinical environments.
NYT: So “clinical” is something to be avoided.
Kim: It’s an interesting word. We want our health-care professionals to be objective and not emotional in assessing our state of being. But at the same time there’s a growing awareness that clinical environments work against the good work that doctors do — that they may actually increase stress levels, not only in patients but in their families.
Read the article.
Contaminants Under Foot: A Closer Look at Patient Room Floors
Power Outages Largely Driven by Extreme Weather Events
Nemours Children's Health Opens New Moseley Foundation Institute Hospital
Code Compliance Isn't Enough for Healthcare Resilience
Ribbon Cutting Marks First Phase Completion for New Montefiore Einstein Facility