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Health by Design

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This project seeks to successfully integrate Evidence-Based Design strategies with J.Todd Robinson’s Hierarchy of Needs Supporting Human Health in the theoretical redesign of a standard impatient unit at Virginia Mason Medical Center’s Capitol Hill campus in Seattle, Washington. Specifically, it hypothesizes that the strategic placement of Evidence Based Design (EBD) findings on the topics of noise, way-finding, lighting, connections to nature, surfaces, ventilation, circulation, ergonomics, privacy, and social support into corresponding tiers of J. Todd Robinson’s Hierarchy of Needs Supporting Hierarchy of Needs Supporting Human-Centered Design will serve to create a stronger, more holistic design framework that is both scale-able for different institutions based upon individual resources and needs, and ensures that the design and construction of new and updated impatient unit floors successfully implements design solutions from all areas identified as contributing to patient well-being to their greatest capacity.

The project was carried out in three phases compromised of a research phase, a design phase, and a report phase. The first of which was further broken down into the subsections of literature review, site analysis, and professional engagement. Following the completion of the latter portion of the research phase, the design and report phase were carried out simultaneously based upon the results of the project’s research phase. The conceptual designs and design recommendations detailed within the final report are intended to serve as a resource for the healthcare architecture community from which architects can carry the ideas presented in this project over into the design of future healthcare facilities.