ABSTRACT

This chapter describes the aesthetic-therapeutic, a new genre in the established health geography field of therapeutic landscapes. It considers the trajectory of this 'aesthetic-therapeutic' turn and describes some of the intricate ways in which the therapeutic becomes the aesthetic and vice versa – a cultural dynamic which, in the hospitals studied, is hotly contested. The Atrium is the best example of those more obviously public spaces whose aesthetic suggests, to users, the airport, the hotel and shopping mall. As long ago as 1888, Florence Nightingale was stating categorically the close relationship that exists between the aesthetic and the therapeutic. Broadly speaking, is the hospital that has come to carry the burden of the therapeutic at least since the Middle Ages. Taken to mean the treatment of disease or more recently the holistic notion of both physical and mental well-being, the therapeutic is the primary function of the hospital.