Bio
Nermin Elwakad is an interior architecture designer and lecturer at Heriot-Watt University. Her areas of expertise include interior design, project management, research, and academic teaching. She specialises in designing healthcare spaces and interior-built environments. In 2019, Nermin received her MA in Interior Architecture from Heriot-Watt University in Scotland for her research on implementing biophilic design in an oncology hospital. Her research focuses on creating healing environments, humanising hospital interior spaces, and employing supportive design to enhance occupants' health and well-being. Nermin's PhD is centered around testing the psychophysiological effect of biophilic design on occupants of oncology hospitals, with a specific focus on the chemotherapy department and its two main occupant categories: patients and carers. The title of her PhD is "Following the Footprints of Nature: Testing Biophilic Design Effects on Chemotherapy Patients’ Psycho-Physiological Conditions".
Favourite (interior) architecture project
Khoo Teck Puat(KTPH), a hospital in a garden, is designed as a ‘forest-like’ green court, including water features with species and plants. The greenery cascades to the upper levels and down into an open-to-sky basement, creating the ambience of an interior environment that is deeply enmeshed into a garden and the upper levels’ balconies with scented plants. Enjoying scenery employs the mind without fatigue, exercises tranquillity, and enlivens it.
Contact & Links
Mutsaardstraat 31 - 2000 Antwerpen - België
nermin.elwakad@uantwerpen.be
Visit Nermin's UAntwerpen web page