A tectonic approach to healthcare- and welfare architecture?: The Willow Tearooms as an exampel

Within the last decade, increasing political attention has been put on academic research investigating the influence of architecture on health, care and wellbeing, manifest as a call for operational design strategies. This call is primarily addressed through evidence-based research studies indicating that the quality of architecture influence health and wellbeing. Hence, this attention also raises new demands for architectural practices and a questioning of the role of architects as researchers, which define the scope of this paper. Because, often these evidence-based studies are positioned in quantitative research methods that tend to reduce the aesthetic sensitivity of individual experiences in order to technically measure and quantify the question of atmosphere in the architecture. In addressing this challenge, it is our idea to lend the notion of tectonics, applied in architectural theory as a description of the fundamental task of the architect to fuse aesthetics and technique. We ask ourselves whether a tectonic approach can be applied in positioning and linking the vital aesthetic dimension of architecture to the technically measurable principles in future healthcare-architecture research? This hypothesis is investigated by analysing a historical example, namely the creation of the Willow Tearoom designed by Charles R. Mackintosh in 1903. The unique atmosphere that permeate the interior and furniture design of these tearooms was carried forth by a socio-cultural agenda intended to support and edify the everyday health and wellbeing of the families of Glasgow. It is an exceptional piece of healthcare architecture, and we argue that a tectonic approach has been applied that bridge material, construction, body, mind and socio-cultural dimensions which can be recalled and applied in future healthcare related research as a means to overcome the risk of reducing the aesthetic sensitivity of individual experiences in practice.