The Covert Life of Hospital Architecture addresses hospital architecture as a set of interlocked, overlapping spatial and social conditions. It identifies ways that planned-for and latent functions of hospital spaces work jointly to produce desired outcomes such as greater patient safety, increased scope for care provider communication and more intelligible corridors.
By advancing space syntax theory and methods, the volume brings together emerging research on hospital environments. Opening with a description of hospital architecture that emphasizes everyday relations, the sequence of chapters takes an unusually comprehensive view that pairs spaces and occupants in hospitals: the patient room and its intervisibility with adjacent spaces, care teams and on-ward support for their work and the intelligibility of public circulation spaces for visitors. The final chapter moves outside the hospital to describe the current healthcare crisis of the global pandemic as it reveals how healthcare institutions must evolve to be adaptable in entirely new ways. Reflective essays by practicing designers follow each chapter, bringing perspectives from professional practice into the discussion.
The Covert Life of Hospital Architecture makes the case that latent dimensions of space as experienced have a surprisingly strong link to measurable outcomes, providing new insights into how to better design hospitals through principles that have been tested empirically. It will become a reference for healthcare planners, designers, architects and administrators, as well as for readers from sociology, psychology and other areas of the social sciences.
Praise for The Covert Life of Hospital Architecture
'a refreshing and relevant look at the evidence base for the design of more humane and effective hospital architecture.'
HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal
Julie Zook is Assistant Professor in the College of Architecture at Texas Tech University.
Kerstin Sailer is Professor in the Sociology of Architecture at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.
List of figures
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Jeri Brittin
Chapter 1: The Spatial Dimension of Hospital Life
Julie Zook
Chapter 2: Pillow
Introduction
Julie Zook
The patient and the reciprocal View
Michelle Ossmann
Reflective essay: The evolution of surveillance in hospital design
George Tingwald
Chapter 3: Table
Introduction
Julie Zook
Working together in healthcare space
Rosica Pachilova and Kerstin Sailer
Reflective Essay: Spatial intelligence to support a team-of-teams ecosystem – relevance and need in practice
Upali Nanda
Chapter 4: Hallway
Introduction - Julie Zook
The visitor and hospital corridor design
Julie Zook and Sonit Bafna
Reflective Essay: Designing a Human-Centred Hospital Wayfinding System
Carlo Giannasca
Chapter 5: Outlook
The social logic of spaces for health: The relational hospital as a response to COVID-19 Kerstin Sailer
Index
'a refreshing and relevant look at the evidence base for the design of more humane and effective hospital architecture.'
HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal
Format: Open Access PDF
187 Pages
51 colour illustrations
Copyright: © 2022
ISBN: 9781800080881
Publication: March 22, 2022
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