Insufficient attention is paid to the quality of space
in our health care environments. Attention is needed
for an architecture of space that can be conducive to
privacy, dignity, homeliness and hopefulness.
Furthermore, spaces are not just created by the
physical environment but by what happens within
them and the practices that occur there that make
the space hospitable to the richness of human life.
The overspecialization of space needs to be tempered
by an attentiveness of how to bring forms of
life that are fully human to the space. A study by
Reed-Danahay (2001) shows how location can be
important for a sense of well-being. She carried out
an ethnographic study in a residential unit for people
with Alzheimer’s in the USA using the concepts of
place and non-place from Auge´ and Bourdieu.
Analysis showed that some residents experienced
greater confusion partly due to the bureaucratic
‘‘office-like’’ and ‘‘unhomely’’ setting in which they
lived. In other words, their confusion could not just
simply be explained by the neurophysiology of
Alzheimer’s disease on its own, as if it occurred
without a living context. Reed-Danahay thus argues
that the biomedical model of Alzheimer patients
pathologizes their behaviour and underestimates the
human dimensions of living in qualitatively different
environments.