Designing Salutogenic Spaces to Promote Health

At the time of writing this paper, a year has passed since the declaration of a global health emergency following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, triggered by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Much has been written about the causes at one level or another, and many ideas have been put forward on how best to tackle the problem in the short term, especially through health measures, and a new organisation of society reflected in numerous restrictions imposed by national governments. Some researchers have explored the connection between sickness and environment, and it has been stressed that there is the need for “transformative change, using the evidence from science to reassess the relationship between people and nature, and to reduce global environmental changes that are caused by unsustainable consumption, and which drive biodiversity loss, climate change and pandemic emergence” [2]. It is a vision that moves towards a bio-psycho-social approach to human health, whereby attention is shifted from the diseased organ to the human being as a complete whole, not least considering the environment in which the person lives, in all senses: physical and biological, relational, psychological, social, and ecological. In this scenario, the built environment plays a role of primary importance regarding both the impact of the construction industry — environmental and economic — and pollution created by the energy management of an often outdated and power-hungry stock of buildings, as well as guaranteeing conditions of hygiene that make it possible to prevent the onset of illnesses. Following the salutogenic paradigm, buildings can be designed not only to guarantee suitable conditions of hygiene and psychological and physical wellbeing, but also to promote health factors in their surrounding environment, stimulating the self-restorative element in individuals to give them mastery of the healing process: “Health is not a static condition but finds expression in a dialectic relationship with the environment through an adaptive and transformative plasticity that involves overcoming and processing potentially health-threatening stresses. An example of this adaptive capacity is the immune system” (Carmelo Samonà). Accordingly, an environment that supports a person to promote health can facilitate the production of resources able to fortify the immune system and increase its readiness to take on possible external hazards, including viral threats. Architecture can therefore become a formidable tool by which to anticipate, counter and contain the problems and the effects associated with possible future pandemics.