Wellness

Integrated wellbeing

Abstract

A few years ago, it would have seemed impolite to associate the idea of healthcare with that of wellness. Today, not only does this raise no objections, there is actually a real need, a need we could even call social, to combine the two spheres. The level of scientific knowledge and the civil development of western societies now set the objective of raising quality of life, even in its most extreme conditions. In the integrated system of the contemporary city, wellness centers help achieve this goal.

In the introductory article, Umberto Veronesi and Maurizio Mauri offer an authoritative look at the hospital of the future. The hospital is hybrid, seeks to reduce hospital stays and conditions of ‘suffering’, favoring an architecture integrated with functions of the ‘outside’ world, such as shopping and education, to avoid the sense of ‘ghettization’ common in traditional hospitals. Even the architectural vocabulary of wellness centers is increasingly more difficult to distinguish from that of medical institutions, which were once ascetically austere and ‘punishing’. Of course, this doesn’t apply to intensive care units, in which the technological component necessarily dominates.