Topher Delaney - Healing Spaces

 

Topher Delaney – Healing Spaces

Topher Delaney is particularly interesting, because her inspiration for much of her work was her own illness. When first asked to design the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Centre healing garden, her work was instantly disparaged by management who decided her design was too colourful and cheery for use of patients with often terminal cancers. Only when she revealed she was a cancer patient at the time, did her plans gain traction in this case.

Further reading on healing spaces has been particularly interesting, especially Delaney’s explanation of the user needing a sense of ‘protection’ in a healing garden, which is not something which can be easily designed.

understanding specific amendments required for access, weakened immune systems, shelter from cold and wind, as well as understanding that the users of a healing garden and the commissioners who pay for it are diametrically opposite groups, shows how landscape and design can be highly political and technical, as well as helpful and inspirational.