Well-being from the perspective of interior architecture: expected experience about residing in residential care centers

Abstract

In architectural practice, residential care centers need to comply with complex restrictions and requirements regarding objective parameters (e.g., measurements due to safety and accessibility). Paradoxically, this may hinder attention for qualitative aspects such as experience or well-being. Nonetheless, the physical environment has been shown to have the potential to increase well-being. It is therefore important for (interior) architects to gain as much insight as possible in how interior architectural design contributes to individuals’ well-being. The tension between expected experience (prejudices) and actual experience of people towards residential care centers is an interesting angle to approach this complex research topic. Its study can provide opportunities to work out spatial ‘solutions’. This research is biphasic. First, communal spaces in a selection of residential care centers in the Belgian province of Limburg are documented through photographs. Next, a selection of these photographs is used as stimulus material in an explorative questionnaire. Our research results indicate that well-being can be approached by interior architectural themes and that environmental dealbreakers and must haves are similar on short- and long-term perspective. Therefore, predicting experiences enables us to construct a positively experienced environment.