Clinical healthcare settings now place an emphasis on restorative and healing environments as a desired mode to curative care. This can be achieved through the incorporation of three foundational principles which promote healing within curative environments. The three foundational principles to achieve this include human connection to nature, place identity, and user-controlled experience. To successfully create curative and healing environments that help supplement conventional approaches to medicine, healing, and human well-being, is the direction I have explored in my Interior Design thesis. My thesis aims to define the opportunities behind creating a patient centric and patient controlled environment that promotes holistic approaches to medicine by bridging the gap between conventional medicine and alternative therapies. This investigation seeks to promote a curated and self-guided journey for both the patient and their support teams while carefully considering the treatment paths that each patient experiences. It is my goal to embrace the human connection to nature and the utilization of patient-controlled experiences to create a positive journey to healing.

Empathy is the action of understanding and being aware of others' experiences. The word empathy directly translates from German as "in feeling." This definition of empathy is the process of projecting into another person to understand them fully. This is the starting point for empathetic design. Empathetic design is a design strategy that aims to understand the lives and experiences of users through immersion and then apply that understanding of the user throughout the design process.

This thesis employs empathetic design practices and strategies for well-being by focusing on spaces that enhance feelings of connection, comfort, and belonging. The Nest is a community center for mothers that utilizes these concepts. It is a nurturing environment for mothers that aims to bring mothers together in a healing environment that gives them space to focus on their well-being.

Modern hospice care design is currently made up of four building typologies, including a wing within a hospital, a building connected to a hospital, an independent facility, and at home care. These current typology designs are deficient in the care of both their patients and their patients’ families and caregivers. There is a current culture of silence around death that can be read in these typologies and instead of making people feel at home, they produce undue stress, anxiety, and isolation. My thesis project challenges the current hospice care building environments by using architecture and design to improve end of life care experiences. My design will seek to enable and allow patients to live their life to the fullest through the engagement of the senses, creating a sense of home and community, and creating spaces that metaphorically and physically assist and guide patients and their families through this final journey.

Homelessness and food insecurity are issues in every metropolitan area across the United States. Current solutions only offer temporary answers, which is not a sustainable way of thinking. Prioritizing the people and the community needs is a way to begin to understand better design strategies for long term solutions. A new way to start thinking about designing a permanent residence and providing food security is by creating spaces that provide safety and security to aid in comfort and recovery, fostering a community to work together to address these issues, and make the system a sustainable one to break the cycle of homelessness while helping the environment for which they inhabit.

Understanding the process & experience of recovery for substance abuse disorders, and how to design and visually represent an atmosphere of comfort, healing, and connection to nature in a rehabilitation facility.

Housing has been transformed into an industry, rather than a right, which has made it increasingly difficult for marginalized communities to obtain and sustain viable housing. Housing insecurity is an ongoing crisis that intersects with the built environment by presenting a unique list of needs that interiors programming and design could better address through trauma-informed methods.

This thesis project will explore the relationship between light and aesthetics, comfort and mood. I aim to work with light, including temperature and luminosity, to enhance mood and create a sense of comfort in different spaces and times. I am especially interested in empathetic technologies that allow for dynamic adjustment of light based on individual preference and need.

It all begins with an idea.

It all begins with an idea.