ABSTRACT
Previously, design and health was primarily the purview of healthcare designers, the occupants of whose buildings (i.e., hospitals) should clearly benefit from surroundings supporting health and wellbeing. Nonetheless, when I was coming up through the ranks in medical training in the late 1900s, even hospitals were not designed to support wellbeing, and were for the most part noisy, malodorous mazes better suited to supporting the diagnostic and surgical equipment within them rather than the patients and staff. In the early 2000s, the field began to change, with more and more health-care institutions embracing the concept of designing for wellbeing and improved patient experience. Then the downturn of 2008–2009 hit the design and building professions particularly hard. That catalyzed a new movement in the field of design and health. My book, Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-Being (Harvard University Press), was published at exactly that moment. It tapped into the widespread desire of health-care professionals seeking evidence that the design of the built environment really does matter for health. The field has now reached a turning point, with the explosion of new noninvasive wearable technologies being applied to objectively and in near-real-time measure the impacts of the many features of the built environment on many aspects of health, wellbeing, and performance. In turn, new materials and the Internet of Things are allowing the development of smart buildings, which can interact with occupants to optimize their health, wellbeing, performance, and overall experience. Companies previously focused on positioning themselves as “green” are now turning to positioning themselves in the marketplace as both green and healthy. This book addresses new cutting-edge technologies and materials at the interface between design and health, reviews some of the latest findings of studies using these technologies, and suggests exciting directions where the field will go in the future.
