Salutogenic Design

Health promotion has two main theoretical orientations: pathogenesis and salutogenesis. The pathogenic orientation focuses on identifying and addressing the factors that cause disease. In 1979, Aaron Antonovsky proposed salutogenesis as an alternative theoretical orientation. Salutogenesis focuses on factors that create and maintain health rather than those that cause disease. Although both approaches are necessary, salutogenesis seems to be the more appropriate and promising orientation for environmental design. Antonovsky&s;s theory maintains that people move toward health on the health–disease continuum when they can cope with the stressors they encounter. According to this theory, a person&s;s resilience to stressors can be determined by the strength of their sense of coherence, which has three components: (1) comprehensibility, (2) manageability, and (3) meaningfulness. Although the term “salutogenic design” has been used liberally to refer to a broad range of design solutions, not all of these solutions have considered the underlying mechanism proposed by the salutogenic theory, which can be problematic. This chapter explains the salutogenic theory and discusses the potential role of environmental factors in this theoretical model by providing examples of its implementation in two areas of interior design: (1) wayfinding and (2) aging in place.