“Yes!”IT ALL SOUNDED good, but like much in Singapore, the nature love was
well packaged, ready-made for brochures and airport posters. Were
all the nice parks and green-carpeted buildings the ones the tourists
and investors see? Was this a Potemkin paradise? To examine the
reach of nature into the lives of real people, I visited a community
hospital, Khoo Teck Puat. It’s not close to the center of the city, and
it’s not used much clinically by foreigners or expats. But it’s known
as a new and successful example of simple biophilic design. I have to
say, it was gobsmackingly nice, especially for a hospital. Many rooms
faced the inner, luxuriant garden courtyard, dense with trees and
shrubs specifically selected to attract birds and butterflies. Outside sat
a sizable pond, a medicinal herb garden and a walking path. Artificial
mini islands floated in the pond to attract egrets. The overall site
employed a conscious design for biodiversity: endangered fish swam
in a little watercourse that wove through the garden. Sadly, this is
about the only habitat they have left.
Plants draped over balconies on each floor, giving the impression
the building had just risen from the jungle floor, adding to the
Shangri-La effect. “We call it the hospital in a garden,” said chief
gardener Rosalind Tan, who is sometimes called Madame Butterfly,
as we walked by a blooming hibiscus, popular with the tiny golden
sunbird. “We know from practical experience that people enjoy
greenery and we try to create a healing environment for patients so
they can have lower blood pressure and be in a better condition to see
a doctor.”
We walked through the spotless ICU, where every patient has a
view of trees out six-foot windows. At many points, corridors and
landings open up to the outdoors. I noticed none of the usual
antiseptic hospital smell, despite the place having one of the lowest
hospital-acquired infection rates in the country, according to Tan. I