Therapeutic Parking: A study of how the language of therapeutic design informs the redesign of the Georgetown University Hospital main parking garage

Abstract

A successful landscape is one that allows people to feel comfortable within that landscape. Many people who live in an urban environment use gardens and parks as a way to balance their lives from the hard edge of what the world requires of them. That balance adds to the level of comfort and a decrease in stress. My thesis is to create a parking garage with that balance. A balance of hardscape with softscape, of practical uses with amenities, and of current methodology with progressive ideology. It will integrate parking and gardens, the static with the transitional. The proposal will create a balance between parking spaces where time is measured in hours with garden areas where time is measured in seasons. Thomas Jefferson said, "It takes time to persuade man to do even what is for his own good." This thesis is an example of that. Something that will take time for people, companies, municipalities and governing bodies to aspire to but that will, ultimately, be to the benefit of everyone.