Using the therapeutic landscape database to assist landscape design in hospitals and long-term care

Nature as a guide that can promote health has been confirmed for more than 30 decades. Gesler (1992, 2003) defined the therapeutic landscape as all kinds of settings related to fostering health benefits for humans. According to a World Health Organization (WHO) report, the number of older people has increased worldwide. By 2050, those over 60 years old will be one in five people. Therefore, long-term care and hospital environment design are critical for relieving human physical/psychological stress. A study pointed out that dementia-friendly environments that emphasize orientation, accessibility, socialization, meaningful activities, reminiscence, sensory stimulations, safety, and sustainability in the outdoor environment are essential issues that landscape designers must address to improve users’ health (Motealleh et al., 2019). Therefore, this research provides a method linking evidence from health landscape databases and transferring health scores into the landscape design principle. Using Journal Citation Reports to select the categories pertaining to “Landscape” keywords related to “landscape and health” such as “nature”, “well-being”, “happiness”, and “preference”, were used to search the physical and psychological health indexes in ScienceDirect and Scopus. From the database, the diverse contents (e.g., flowers, animals, natural-based facilities, and plants) in the settings and the indicators of health-related measurements gave designers “visions”, allowing them to explain how and why a landscape promotes health. The more natural the designs, the more health is promoted. Therefore, the selection of landscape images with corresponding physical (e.g., heart rate) or psychological indicators (e.g., restorativeness and landscape preference) could promote solid evidence-based design for those who live in long-term care or hospitals that allows them to connect with nature daily.