Design for Health

Design for Health: Sustainable Approaches to Therapeutic Architecture Guest-Edited by Terri Peters

This issue of AD seeks out innovative and varied sustainable architectural responses to designing for health, such as:

• integrating sensory gardens and landscapes into the care environment;
• specifying local materials and passive technologies;
• and reinvigorating aging postwar facilities.

Contributors include: Anne-Marie Adams, Sean Ahlquist, Giuseppe Boscherini, Robin Guenther, Charles Jencks, Richard Mazuch, Stephen Verderber,

Featured architects: 100% Interior, Arup, C.F. Møller, Lyons, MASS Design Group, Mongomery Sisam Architects, Penoyre & Prasad

About the Guest-Editor 05
Terri Peters

Introduction

Interconnected Approachesto Sustainable Architecture 06
Terri Peters

Decoding Modern Hospitals

An Architectural History 16
Annmarie Adams

Superarchitecture

Building for Better Health 24
Terri Peters

Lean, Green and Healthy

Landscape and Health 32
Julian Weyer

Salutogenic and Biophilic Design as Therapeutic Approaches to Sustainable Architecture 42
Richard Mazuch

Environmentally Smart Design

Designing for Social Wellbeing Across the City and in the Workplace 48
Alisdair McGregor, Ann Marie Aguilar and Victoria Lockhart

Humanist Principles, Sustainable Design and Salutogenics

A New Form of Healthcare Architecture 56
Corbett Lyon

Maggie’s Architecture

The Deep Affinities Between Architecture and Health 66
Charles Jencks

Healthy Patient Rooms in Hospitals

Emotional Wellbeing Naturally 76
Sylvia Leydecker

Can Architecture Heal?

Buildings as Instruments of Health 82
Michael Murphy and Jeffrey Mansfield

Multisensory Architecture

The Dynamic Interplay of Environment, Movement and Social Function 90
Sean Ahlquist, Leah Ketcheson and Costanza Colombi

Architects as First Responders

Portable Healthcare Architecture in a Climate-Altered World 100
Stephen Verderber

A Sense of Coherence

Supporting the Healing Process 108
Giuseppe Boscherini

Cultivating the ‘In-Between’

Humanising the Modern Healthcare Experience 114
Terry Montgomery

Regenerative Agents

Patient-Focused Architectures 112
Sunand Prasad

Counterpoint Transforming Hospitals

Building Restorative Healthcare 128
Robin Guenther

Contributors 134

Terri Peters is a Canadian architect, writer and researcher now based in Toronto, who previously lived and worked in Denmark and the UK for 12 years. She has a broad network of multi-disciplinary collaborators, relating to sustainability research, building transformation, health and wellbeing, as well as the employment of new technologies. She is a Post-Doctoral researcher at the University of Toronto, investigating the relationship between sustainable architecture and health, particularly analysing how architectural design can improve patient wellbeing in residential care environments. She has organised conferences, served on discussion panels and award juries, and made presentations to various international construction industry and research institutions. She is the editor of two recent publications: Experimental Green Strategies: Redefining Ecological Design Research, AD (Wiley, 2011) and Inside Smartgeometry: Expanding the Architectural Possibilities of Computational Design (Wiley 2013).

Our experience of hospitals and medical clinics is almost wholly determined by their architecture. The spatial and sensory qualities of our surroundings influence how we behave and relate to others, while also affecting our spiritual and physical wellbeing. It is proven that an abundance of daylight, access to fresh air and to low-stress uncluttered spaces aids the reduction of anxiety, elevates the mood and improves patients’ outcomes. Sustainability is permeating all areas of architecture, and designers are investigating the connections between patient experience, wellbeing and long-term thinking in healthcare design.

This issue of AD seeks out innovative and varied sustainable architectural responses to designing for health, such as: integrating sensory gardens and landscapes into the care environment; specifying local materials and passive technologies; and reinvigorating ageing postwar facilities. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches to sustainability are explored. Design solutions range from those employing passive thermal strategies and recycled materials in construction to those giving careful consideration to the manner in which a structure is positioned on site and orientated. Each design makes its own unique interpretation of the sustainable brief. Drawing on international built examples that excel in combining the highest level of healthcare with an enlightened approach to architectural design, this AD highlights the importance of designing for the long term, creating inspiring spaces, and connecting healthcare to the wider community.

Contributors include: Annmarie Adams, Sean Ahlquist, Giuseppe Boscherini, Robin Guenther, Charles Jencks, Richard Mazuch, and Stephen Verderber.

Featured architects: 100% interior, Arup, CF Møller, Lyons, MASS Design Group, Montgomery Sisam Architects, and Penoyre & Prasad.