History and Theory of Design for Health

Catalog description

This core course, ARCH 753, focuses on the history and theory related to designing for health, at the intersection of methodologies, design commonalities and specificities, between health and disease of our bodies, minds and the mutually reciprocal relationship to the healthiness of our built environments. Principles of holistic design for health, as well as some of the key tools and design approaches are introduced in this course. Aiming to introduce a history of health institutions and their associated spaces, the course will develop expertise with which to address common challenges faced by aging or users with special abilities through universal or inclusive design, confronting the notion of a normative, standardized, and idealized human body. A contemporary human-centered approach to designing spaces for wellness challenges the practice of standardization in architectural and interior spaces, including standards of healthcare. Architectural spaces are conventionally designed for normative bodies, generally dismissing diversity and special abilities as limiting factors in how people use and move through spaces. Built spaces, products, and clothing are all based on dimensions and measurements of averaged and often idealized bodies. There persists an unconscious practice of bias, based on standardized, normative body features, dimensions, and capacities. Designing for people with special abilities environments, services, and products has to be practiced in such a way that they can be used by all people to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design. Students examine the major health barriers and their spatial consequences, affecting the design of spaces. The ways in which architectural and interior spaces have contributed throughout history to our well-being or dis-ease form the overall focus of this core course. The course…