It is the architect's responsibility to protect the public's health, safety, and welfare. Ironically, healthcare facilities, whose programs focus on those elements, often seem to fall short of those basic design standards. The evolution of healthcare practices has brought us to a stage of design that focuses on the machine rather than the patient. This shift has created stripped, unwelcoming, and unnatural healthcare environments that have proven to negatively impact the health and well-being of facilities' patients.
Dialysis treatment facilities, whose medical procedures rely so heavily on machines, are an even more extreme condition of this imbalance. In an effort to raise awareness of this problem and reinvigorate architectural design that actually promotes healthy environments, I chose to explore the idea of "design that heals". Through the conscientious integration of nature, light, and color, this project redefines the priorities of a healthcare facility and takes a holistic and sustainable approach to design that better cares for the patients and enlivens the community.
The proposed program pairs a dialysis clinic with a community nutrition center which helps address the causes of kidney disease at the source. Located in an underserved Anacostia neighborhood, the people-focused building provides nutrition education, food production and healthcare services. Taking inspiration from the filtration process of dialysis, the building aims to celebrate and expose its own water circulation systems, mirroring the beautiful, yet chaotic, systems within the human body. / Master of Architecture / This thesis explores how the architectural design of healthcare facilities impacts the health and well-being of the building’s occupants. Healing requires a holistic support system that provides for the patients physically, psychologically, and socially. Therefore, the environments which are designed to support this healing must be in tune with those needs and cater to each those factors.
“Design that Heals” applies this holistic design strategy to a dialysis treatment facility, a branch of healthcare whose design is often overlooked and underserved. This research reveals specific environmental elements that can be improved upon through design in order to create spaces that better support healing, including the integration of natural light, nature, artwork, social support, increased patient control and decreased noise levels. This proposed treatment facility, which acts as an example for the design of future clinics, illustrates the application of these design strategies, creating a facility that actually supports the welfare and healing of the building’s occupants.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/83876 |
| Date | 06 July 2018 |
| Creators | Smith, Maureen Elizabeth |
| Contributors | Architecture, Piedmont-Palladino, Susan C., Emmons, Paul F., Kelsch, Paul J. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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