Sanjana's story & research - How can architecture help us recover?

I remember the low ceilings, cramped corridors and glaring lights of the eating disorder day unit before I remember much else.

At fourteen, I began treatment for anorexia. For the next seven years, hospitals, clinics and treatment rooms became a strange part of my everyday life. I learnt the routes, the waiting rooms, the corridors and the chairs I would sit in.

Eventually, the spaces themselves became inscribed into my memory.

Recovery from an eating disorder is difficult enough. But what happens when the spaces designed to facilitate recovery become part of the difficulty?

My BA Architecture dissertation, Only with the rain, do the flowers grow: A Retrospective Analysis of Eating Disorder Treatment Spaces in London, began with this question. It was an attempt to understand eating disorder treatment through the thing I knew how to reflect on and examine: architecture.

I wrote it from a point further along in recovery, looking retrospectively at the spaces in which some of the most difficult moments of my life took place. It became part architectural analysis, part personal reflection, and part an argument for a different approach to healthcare design.

The architecture of being unwell

Mental health architecture has a complicated history.

London's psychiatric institutions have often reflected the social attitudes of their time. From the infamous Bethlem Hospital, whose architecture became spectacle as much as care, to twentieth-century psychiatric hospitals such as the Maudsley, mental healthcare has frequently been shaped by ideas of separation, surveillance and institutional authority.

These histories matter because architecture is never simply a container for treatment. It establishes relationships: between patient and clinician, body and environment, privacy and observation, freedom and control. For someone experiencing anorexia, these relationships can become particularly intense.

Anorexia changes the way the body is experienced. Space can consequently become charged with fear, shame and hyper-awareness. A corridor is no longer simply a corridor; a dining room is not simply a dining room. The atmosphere of a space can become entangled with the emotions experienced within it.

At an adolescent ED day unit, where I received treatment as a teenager, I experienced this intensely. The building felt like an object adapted to contain a programme rather than a space designed around the people inhabiting it. Narrow corridors, artificial lighting, restricted movement and limited access to the outdoors contributed to an atmosphere that often felt claustrophobic and institutional.

The route through the unit was particularly significant. Rooms were arranged along a largely linear axis, culminating in the dining room. For me, that route became psychologically loaded. The anxiety associated with eating could not simply disappear when the meal ended; it became attached to the journey through the building itself.

What does a healing space feel like?

This led me to the idea of atmosphere. Architectural atmosphere is difficult to measure. It isn't simply a question of whether a room has enough windows, whether a corridor is wide enough, or whether a garden is present. It is the accumulated feeling produced through light, material, sound, temperature, movement, relationships and memory.

The buildings I was treated in were far from perfect. Many treatment spaces are old, difficult to navigate and poorly lit. But I began to understand that healing isn't necessarily produced by a beautiful building.

It can be produced by choice. Not choices that have to be statements, but simple, easy and accessible choices.

Listening to lived experience

I conducted a small survey with former patients who had experienced an ED day unit. We focused on the dining room because it brought together many of the emotional and sensory difficulties of eating-disorder treatment.

The responses were striking.

Patients described the room as crowded, dark, claustrophobic, loud and emotionally loaded. Artificial lighting, hard surfaces, limited space and a poor connection to the garden could intensify anxiety. One participant described needing more personal space; another suggested softer furnishings to reduce sudden noise; another wanted more natural light and a stronger connection to the outdoors.

But there was an important caveat: architecture alone cannot heal an eating disorder. This became one of the most important findings of my research: perhaps healing spaces should not only be designed for patients; they should be designed with their agency in mind.

Recovery is relational. It emerges through the interaction between people, treatment, social relationships and the environments in which these things take place. A garden does not automatically become therapeutic simply because it exists. A window does not automatically create comfort. The meaning of a space depends upon how it can be accessed, used and experienced.

A different model of care

An example I explored was the redevelopment of Springfield University Hospital. It provided an opportunity to see what this might look like at a larger scale.

The new Springfield scheme moves beyond the isolated hospital model. Its principles include natural light, connection to nature, improved porosity, community integration and creative spaces for healing. The masterplan introduces public parkland, new routes through the site and stronger relationships between healthcare and the surrounding community.

The new Eating Disorders Day Unit is particularly significant. Rather than organising treatment along a single corridor, the spaces are more interconnected. A hospital street and atrium bring daylight into the building, while gardens and roof terraces provide opportunities to connect with nature. The architecture allows different forms of movement and occupation rather than prescribing one route through treatment.

Art has also been incorporated through collaboration with patients, carers and staff. These changes might appear simple: more light, more nature, better routes, art and community. But together, they represent something much bigger.

They begin to redistribute control between clinicians, patients and the space itself.

Designing for dignity

I am now more than three years into self-navigated recovery. I cannot say that architecture saved me. Recovery required enormous personal determination, alongside the support of clinicians, family and others around me.

But the architecture I occupied mattered.

This is why I believe lived experience needs to sit much closer to the centre of architectural conversations around healthcare.

The architect cannot design a healing experience alone. But architects can create the conditions for dignity, agency, connection and possibility.

We should ask not only whether a healthcare building functions, but how it makes someone feel when they walk through its doors.

Does it make them feel watched or trusted? Contained or supported? Isolated or connected?

Does it tell someone that they are ill, or that they are worth caring for?

For me, the most important lesson of researching eating-disorder treatment spaces was that healing can be understood as a design experience. Architecture cannot promise recovery. But it can help create an environment in which recovery feels possible.

Perhaps our responsibility as designers is not to remove the rain, but to make sure that, when it comes, there is somewhere for the flowers to grow.

Want to get involved in sharing your lived experience to make positive changes in eating disorder research and treatment? Take a look at our Experts by Experience opportunities: Become an Expert by Experience