I believe well-designed places and objects can actually improve healing, while poor design can inhibit it.
Interpretation
Good design can enhance healing processes, while bad design can hinder them.
This quote emphasizes the importance of design in environments and objects where healing takes place, such as hospitals and homes. Michael Graves suggests that thoughtful and well-executed design can create an atmosphere conducive to recovery, whereas poorly designed spaces may create stress and discomfort, ultimately affecting a person's ability to heal.
In practice
Using this quote to inspire an architecture firm focusing on healthcare buildings.
Form must never trump function. Some objects are made to look so smooth, you don't know where to pick them up or how to turn them on. If I'm designing a garlic press or cheese grater, I need my hand to fit comfortably on it. I like to know, instinctively, how to use it.
Good design should be available to everyone - and I do mean everyone. What I spent on the wheelchair I'm in could buy a small Mercedes. It's not only unfair to me; it's unfair to someone who's indigent but has the same needs. My goal is to make all objects affordable.
We've taken on health care in a big way in our office, ever since nine years ago when I was paralyzed. I was in eight different hospitals, three different rehab centers, and all the rooms were dreadful. As an architect, designer, and patient, I can do something to help.
Instead of using the machine as a metaphor for architecture, as Le Corbusier did, I use the human body. I want the public to know that it's them I'm designing for.
The important thing is to bring people with Parkinson's into our world and for the public to have a real understanding of it, as they've beginning to have with autism.
When you have a concussion, one of the symptoms that is common is anxiety. Imagine having the normal amount of anxieties that everybody shares - about life and meeting people in social spaces, whatever. Imagine that being multiplied by 10, 20. And so your worry over people's perceptions of you multiplies.
There are more people dying of malaria than any specific cancer.
The global HIV/AIDS epidemic is an unprecedented crisis that requires an unprecedented response. In particular it requires solidarity - between the healthy and the sick, between rich and poor, and above all, between richer and poorer nations. We have 30 million orphans already. How many more do we have to get, to wake up?
Self-care is the non-negotiable. That's the thing that you have to do. And beauty is the thing that can be the benefit of the self-care. Beauty is not the point. Beauty is just a cute side-effect from self-care.
People with Alzheimer's deserve to be seen, so that we can find a cure!
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