Made-Life Challenge 2023-2024: create the Treatment Room of the Future. The winning idea/design will actually be realized... so get involved! Want to know how the competition works? Then scroll down. A better treatment place... why is it so necessary? Hundreds of thousands of people, including tens of thousands of children and young people, spend millions of hours in treatment rooms throughout the Netherlands every year. These rooms can be found at your general practitioner, psychologist, (specialist) mental health institutions, hospitals and sometimes also online. Most patients do not feel comfortable in these rooms. Some even see them as unhealthy... ​ This is how (former) patients describe the spaces: most offices are cozier, not to mention the waiting area most rooms have not changed in recent decades Fluorescent lighting and suspended ceilings are still the norm some seats are comfortable, but most are not most rooms are interchangeable; there is nothing personal about them daylight, colors, plants and art are only sporadically found You have to sit, but sometimes you want to stand, move, run... And this is what it feels like to people who are treated there: you feel watched, studied and vulnerable you immediately feel the power dynamic upon entering you have no distractions; you must continuously look at the care provider sometimes you don't just want to talk about yourself, sometimes it helps to talk about yourself indirectly - through an object sometimes you don't want to stay inside, you want to go outside sometimes you don't want to look at each other, but you want to look past each other sometimes you just want to listen to music, play it or 'get something off your mind' Example of a current Treatment Room: Example Dimensions: width: 300 cm depth: 350 cm height: 285 cm

How does the competition work? Do what you are good at! For this competition we ask a number of colleges and universities with a interior design major to give their students free rein to their creativity and design new, beneficial and psychologically-comfortable treatment rooms for children, young people and adults with psychological problems. What are you going to create? We ask you to submit a 3D design with a budget indication. It is entirely up to you whether you work alone or with a team. Who will judge the work? Your submission will be assessed by a jury of (former) patients from the Netherlands' largest patient association MIND and by a professional jury. This professional jury consists of four folks: a psychiatrist (Prof. Dr. Robert Schoevers, Head of Psychiatry UMC Groningen), a psychologist (Gijs Coppes, GZ psychologist & CEO OpenUp), an interior designer (Roos Reedijk, known from 'Kopen Zonder Kijken'). and an architect (Francesco Messori, Creative Director D/DOCK). ​ What can you win? The prize money - currently €8,000, but we are trying to raise more - will be used to realize the (your?) winning design. An existing treatment room will therefore be transformed based on the winning design. Which existing treatment room will actually be transformed will be decided by lottery. What if you don't win? No worries: all designs and budgets will be published and promoted as a source of inspiration and new ideas for the 'Treatment Room of the Future'. All leading mental health institutions and hospitals will also see your work.

Deadline for the 3D design and budget is Friday January 26, 2024. The juries will deliberate during February. The announcement of the winning design and the exhibition of all ideas and designs will take place on Sunday, March 3, 2024, in Utrecht. Through a draw among interested mental health institutions, it will become clear in during the summer of 2024 at which mental health institution this winning design will be realized. MADE-Life will realize the winning design later in 2024

MADE-Life will track the societal impact that this 'Room 2024' Challenge will actually have. In this case we will track how many treatment rooms will be transformed based on the design of all the participating students. Stay tuned!

All designs will be published under 'Creative Commons' 4.0 license with attribution (syntax: "<school name>, <team members names> in collaboration with MADE-Life foundation 2024". Creative Commons license conditions can be viewed here.

Where else can you find information? There are many books written on this subject. Here is a short list: - 'Notes on Nursing', Florence Nightingale (1859) - 'Creating Great Places: Evidence-based Urban Design for Health and Wellbeing' - Debra Flanders Cushing, Evonne Miller - 'Nature Inside: A biophilic design guide', William D. Browning, Catherine O. Ryan - 'Feng shui voor iedereen', Spear William

What science is this design challenge based on? There have been many studies on the impact of design and architecture on human well-being. Below we list a number of relevant studies: - Physical environmental stimuli that turn healthcare facilities into healing environments through psychologically mediated effects: systematic review', K. Dijkstra et al. (2006) - 'Patient-Centered Design', Sadler et al. (2008, 2011) - 'Effects of environmental design on patient outcome: a systematic review', J. Laursen et al (2014) - 'The Reorganization of a Psychiatric Unit During COVID-19: A Reflection for Psychiatric Hospital Design', Jodi Sturge, et al. (2022) - 'Healing Architecture in Healthcare: A Scoping Review', Thorben Simonsen, et al (2022) - 'A randomized controlled trial of Golden Ratio, Feng Shui, and evidence based design in healthcare', Emma Zijlstra, Mark Mobach, et al (2024) - 'A Systematic Review of Research Gaps in the Built Environment of Inpatient Healthcare Settings', Marie Elf, et al (2024)