A contemporary view of health and health care has arisen, out of the broadened
social understandings of the later half of this century, which recognizes the individual as a
whole person (rather than a clinical object), and which recognizes the local community
as the preferable locus of care. The community health center model has emerged as a
response to this contemporary view. It is a community-specific model of health care
delivery, health promotion, and community action. Its services cover a full range of
primary health care needs (from social work to urgent care), utilizing a multi-disciplinary
team approach. While the response of facility planning and programming to the
contemporary view of health and health care has been explored to great depth over
the past twenty five years, the response of architecture has not. The intent of this thesis
was, therefore, to create an architectural design that may serve as a model of the multiservice
community health center, and as a source of architectural ideas which respond
to the contemporary view of health and health care. A rural site was selected as the
most appropriate setting for a new purpose-built facility. The design solution specifically
sought to countermand the alienation, stress, loss of sense of personal control,
unfamiliarity, sterility, and institutional qualities of the common medical environment -
particularly, from the experiential viewpoint of the client. The design also sought to stand
on its own as a legitimate work of architecture. Towards these ends, the building was
bound to the community via prominence, accessibility and familiarity in the activities of
daily life. A concept of democratic space sought to extend the public realm and a sense
of public ownership into the facility. A marketplace vocabulary and communitycontrolled
space contributed towards this end. The building was bound to place via
architectural expression and explorations of processional qualities; responding to the
nature of its island place, to the forest environment, and to local vernacular architecture.
The design sought to establish a relationship with nature, or natural order, via an interstitial
relationship with the forest, the use of natural materials, a truthful structural expression, a
presence of natural light, and, at the conceptual level, an interplay between order and
aggregation. As a representation of health care architecture, the design sought to
express the notion of a community of services, rather than that of an untouchable
institution. It also sought to achieve all of this in accord with efficient functioning and
way-finding, and to achieve it at costs comparable to existing facilities (if not less
expensive), via strategic choices regarding systems and construction.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/3940 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Duffield, Craig Edmund James |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds