“I don’t care about places”: the whereabouts of design in mental health care

Ola Söderström engages in a geographical investigation of the relationship between the urban milieu and psychosis, with a focus on young people with mental illnesses in Lausanne, Switzerland. The chapter describes a broader shift in contemporary health care, which has entered a ‘post‐asylum’ era due to the de‐institutionalisation of services. Söderström reverses the perspective of mainstream studies in psychiatry by engaging with the experiential aspects of urban space to describe a set of design features that he sees as conducive to a wider ‘landscape of caring,’ which takes into account the emotional and sensorial needs of people with mental health issues. Söderström attends to the subtleties of urban environments, from scale to atmosphere and rhythm, as well as demonstrating that responding to the challenge of designing for people with psychotic troubles opens up the possibility of crafting spaces that are inclusive of all.