Drafting Meets Doctoring: An Architect’s View of Health Design as Resident Physician

The architect Louis Kahn said that “once challenged, the architect will find completely new shapes and means to produce the hospital, but he cannot know what the doctor knows.” Imagine the lessons learned if the architect could know what the doctor knows. Take an inside look at the hospital environment through the eyes of a dochitect, a hybrid professional in medicine and architecture.

See health design from the perspective of an architect pursuing internal medicine residency training at a large New York City teaching hospital. A design journal was kept throughout the dochitect’s medical internship to record functional annotations for each subspecialty space and their relation to form the urban hospital. Join the dochitect through core rotations including the medical intensive care unit, emergency department, cardiac care unit, outpatient clinics, infectious diseases, general medicine, and geriatrics. Case studies highlighting the importance of space design are presented. Design anecdotes and functional analysis of hospital departments emphasize the practical importance of design qualities that impact the work environment for staff and the healing environment for patients and families.

The dochitect’s practical knowledge of environmental design qualities promotes health and well-being within the hospital environment. The clinicians will find the design perspec­tives useful in providing insight into their daily workspace, empowering them to return to their facilities and promote changes or become involved in renovation or new construction projects; the designers will benefit from the medical perspective and the lessons learned from an architect working within various clinical environments.

Personal anecdotes from patient case studies allow for a behind-the-scenes look and a practical understanding of the use of hospital space. The architect can know what the doctor knows.

Click here to read more dochitect diary entries detailing the design lessons learned as a medical practitioner.

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Note This topic, “An Architect’s View of Health Design as Resident Physician,” was presented at the International Union of Architects Public Health Group (UIA/PHG) Annual Healthcare Forum in Toronto, Canada; September 26, 2013.