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The subjection of patients and medical staff to environmental stress is an important but neglected aspect of healthcare design. This article argues that, in addition to the inevitable stresses associated with being ill and having to wait for treatment, many existing healthcare spaces also inadvertently subject both patients and medical staff to two avoidable sources of stress: isolation from nature, and lack of perceptible change. The research presented demonstrates how three low-tech elements--the wind, foliage, and translucent glass--can be combined to address this problem in four common types of healthcare space in which patients are routinely required to wait for long periods: waiting rooms, examination rooms, outpatient treatment suites, and hospital inpatient rooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports the results of a series of experiments examining the potential psychological link between spatial and temporal prospects, specifically between variations in the degree of foreground obstruction and spatial depth of external window views and an observer's sense of connection to the future. It was found that external views from indoor spaces were strongly associated with a sense of the future, that partially obstructing such a view significantly reduced that association, and that replacing a real view with a pictorial representation removed most of its association with the future. A less extreme change in the spatial depth of a real view, however, appeared to have no significant effect on association with the future. These results suggest that the configuration of external views from inside buildings could directly affect feelings about the future, and in particular levels of optimism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]