Architectures of Healing: Cure through Sleep, Touch, and Travel

by David Berge, Milica Ivic, Antigone Samellas

"Today, many feel fettered by insomnia, untouchability, and restrictions on movement. Looking for a more holistic approach to bodily and mental health, this book explores architectures and elementary forms of care and healing in different time periods: from the powers of sleep, touch, and travel in Asklepieia, the ancient healing temples for divine dream encounters alleviating the pain of the ailing pilgrim; to the attentiveness carried through the healing touch from the establishment of Byzantine hospitals till our times; to a pilgrimage center in modern-day Lesbos on a personal search for healing from the traumas of war and patriarchy; to the liberating and self-preserving powers of sleep as a healing response to past and current systems of oppression."

96 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2021

Reviews

[AlHanouf AlNasser]

Architectures of Healing: Cure Through Sleep, Touch, and Travel reads like a quiet manifesto, reminding us that healing is not only medical but deeply spatial, relational, and embodied. By tracing how ancient practices of sleep, touch, and travel (pilgrimage) once offered forms of care, the book reveals how architecture and environment participate in our well-being. What makes the book so striking and disheartening is how starkly these modalities contrast with our current reality.

In a world where corporate productivity is idealized, cities are designed to alienate rather than connect, individualism overshadows community, and media-related or philosophical literacy erodes, the healing architectures the authors evoke feel almost impossible to reclaim. Yet the book’s power lies precisely in this contrast: it shows us what we’ve lost, and what we might still choose to rebuild.

[57 hours later]

i was sold the moment i saw My Grandmother's Desire to Heal: A Pilgrimage to Lesbos on the table of contents, but the whole collection turned out even better than i expected.
love all these elaborations on the immunity-community in the sleep context with regard to the late capitalism society we live in. the Nap Ministry's idea of naps as a third space that facilitates deep healing hit home, cuz my place has always been a space where my friends could stay safe and sleep unbothered.

[tay]

a really terrific collection! especially impactful was valentina karga's essay on her grandmother's healing journey to lesvos, and a reflection on the interplay, both architectual, historical and philosophical, of different models of healing and power in greece.

[zo]

Interesting review on the title subject with different reflections from artists and designers with an architectural background, pretty interesting, all very connected to Greece.

[Christie]

The final story about the grandmother’s pilgrimage was phenomenal!

[Maru]

The second essay is a tender and empathic reflection on the intra-generational life stories of feminism, Christianity, and cultural heritage and where healing lies in all three.