The Design of Psychologists' Offices: A Qualitative Evaluation of Environment-Function Fit

Psychologists’ offices have been largely absent from contemporary theoretical and methodological discussions of therapeutic environments. Research on environmental stressors, healing environments, psychiatric facilities, and the transactions between a psychologist and client during a therapy session suggest that psychologists’ offices are significant for the psychologists who work there daily and the clients who visit them. To address the gap in the literature, we examined the relationship between psychologists and their office environments in an exploratory, qualitative study using interviews and projective measures. Projective measures included cognitive mapping exercises and photographstaken of the psychologist’s and client's views of each office. We interviewed 10 licensed psychologists about how they perceived—and how they believed their clients perceived— their office environments.

The Academy Journal is published by the AIA Academy of Architecture for Health (AAH). The Journal is the official publication of the AAH and explores subjects of interest to AIA-AAH members and to others involved in the fields of healthcare architecture, planning, design and construction.