Literature review 1 -- Healing environment

Healing environment
- Your guide to indoor well-being (Written by Carol Venolia)

When I decided to research the project about healing interior environment by sensory experiences I borrowed this book from our faculty library.

After read this book, I found that the author Carol Venolia is an architect with a longstanding interest in the relationship between life and buildings. Through her architectural practice on the Mendocino/ Sonoma coast, she designs buildings, consults, writes, lectures, and gives workshops nationally.

This book divided into three parts: Background, Aspects of Healing Environments, and Synthesis. Background was composed by five chapters: Welcome; Health and Place; Indoors, Outdoors; Awareness and Empowerment; Self-Knowledge, Home, and the Health. The second part, Aspects of healing environments, it was made up of seven chapters: Symbols and Environmental Messages; Light; Color; The Thermal Environment; Sound and Noise; Indoor Air Quality; Plants and Gardens. Synthesis was formed by five chapters; they are Applications; Design Elements; Healing Centers; Taking Action; Conclusion and Beginning.

This book takes the reader on a journey of self-exploration to increase awareness of how the buildings we inhabit influence our mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing. Author outlines the factor involved in creating an integrated environment that nurtures not only the body and the mind, but the spirit as well – factors that can be applied to remodeling home or workplaces as well as new construction.

It goes way beyond the concept of “safe” – and often sterile – nontoxic housing. Carol Venolia’s premise is that beating our bodies and minds involves drawing on vital, positive forces within our homes and workplaces, and outside them in nature including weather, light, sound, plants, wildlife, and annual cycles. Her holistic building wisdom, focusing on human diversity and individuality, has not been matched or approached, by any other author.