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Our Mantra: Activate Spaces of Healing! Re-configure. Re-use. Re-make. Re-build. Re-invigorate. Re-new. Creating safe environments that support care requires deep collaboration at the nexus of psychology, phenomenology, and architecture. Yet many healthcare spaces still prioritize institutional logics, leaving patients, families, and staff feeling alienated. Architects Jason Danziger and Nathalie Dziobek-Bepler join psychologist Dr. Isabel Dziobek to explore how environmental factors—applied in an evidence-based, practice-tested manner—can support therapeutic processes and everyday clinical work.

We begin with two interdisciplinary case studies with meaningful architectural detailing: Berlin’s HU Hochschulambulanz and the newly opened Treiste/Barnsley Street NMHC in London. Both combine phenomenal and milieu-therapeutic principles to foster emotional relaxation and orientation, and both demonstrate adaptive reuse under real constraints.

Participants will then be invited to analyze their own work environments through a structured, operative exchange focused on concrete challenges in psychiatric and somatic care, including smaller settings such as surgeries. The workshop concludes with practical, minimally disruptive, high-yield recommendations addressing perception, orientation, color, light distribution, honest materials and calming atmospheres – design strategies optimized for limited budgets while maximizing real-world impact.