Implementing health in all design: A reflection from EDRA 53 Conference

I attended my second EDRA conference (first in-person) last month in the beautiful city of Greenville, SC. This year’s theme was “health in all design.” The intersection, or rather, the integration of health and design was presented, discussed, and challenged across and in-between sessions throughout the conference.

What does it mean to prioritize health in design? How are we creating design that prevents harm, design that cures, or even design that heals? Whose health are we targeting? While we can all agree that green design positively contributes to users’ health, is that enough?

Image source: EDRA53 Greenville Home Page. (n.d.). Retrieved July 5, 2022, from https://www.edra.org/general/custom.asp?page=edra53

In the opening plenary, Robin Guenther talked about furthering our practice to achieve restorative and regenerative design for health. The practice of prioritizing health should remain sustainable across phases of design, construction, occupation, all the way to the building’s end of life. “Oftentimes, we don’t design buildings for disassembly”, Robin stated. This statement reminded me of a class that I took (and taught), “The Environment, Architecture, and Global Health” at the University of Illinois, where I learned the focus on health should not be limited to end-users. Think about the life cycle of the building, from those who are involved in the production of building materials, the community that lives nearby construction sites, the construction workers, and those involved in the demolishment and management of building product waste.

“Oftentimes, we don’t design buildings for disassembly”

- Robin Guenther -

Many presentations that I attended shared how architecture practice, training, and research reacted to the challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. From the practice side, Mike Lyndon from Street Plans presented the reimagination of streets for pandemic response and recovery. To minimize the risk of contracting the virus, outdoor dining was much preferred and considered to be safer. Mike presented a project by Street Plans that celebrated the flexibility of streets to respond to the challenge of providing a safe dining experience during the unprecedented time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Oftentimes, streets are only seen as a physical context. However, the street's role as a social context is even more powerful and can produce tremendous value for the community.

Image source: NACTO, the NACTO Global Designing Cities Initiative, Bloomberg Associates, Street Plans, & Sam Schwartz. (2020). Street for pandemic response & recovery. https://nacto.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Streets_for_Pandemic_Response_Recovery_Full_20-09-24.pdf

From the training side, a presentation by Dr. Cherif Amor from Virginia Commonwealth University showcased the plan to examine the impact of technology on learning in a studio-based environment. Due to the sudden transformation from in-person to remote learning, instructors and students must quickly adapt their teaching and learning dynamics in the studio using various new learning tools. Although the study is still ongoing, the hypothesis is that there is an impact of transforming studio format on the health of the students and the instructors.

Furthermore, on the research side, I got to present my dissertation study, “Food-related activities engagement and adaptation study.” This study was conducted remotely to navigate the challenges to visit older adults’ homes during the pandemic. I utilized photo and video elicitations to bridge the physical gap between myself as a researcher and research participants. Participants had the role to collect photos and videos of the spaces where they do food-related activities. Then, they shared the photo to be discussed in the remote interview. Such adaptation of data collection methods allowed me to continue my research, but also broaden the sample and geographical reach, reduced the cost of data collection, and enhanced the richness of data in my study.

Image source: Ramadhani, W. A. (2022, June 2). Photo and video elicitation for remote architectural research. EDRA 53, Greenville, SC.

Learning these tactics in three domains of architecture (i.e., practice, training, and research), presented how health in all design was achieved through creativity in overcoming the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Image source: Ibrahim, A. M. (2022, June 3). Towards health in all design: New tools, new design. EDRA 53, Greenville, SC.

Throughout the conference, speakers from different educational backgrounds and practices share their take on health in all design. If I must take one thing that I want to remember and carry forward in my current and future practice, it is Dr. Andrew Ibrahim’s keynote session when he quoted Rear Admiral Boris Lushniak (Acting US Surgeon General) who said, “architects are public health workers.” The decisions that architects made in the design, will eventually impact the health of many people, across times. Whether it is housing, education, healthcare, cultural spaces, parks, streets, and other types, forms, and phases of built environment design, designers should be mindful of the concept and operation of health as a catalyst for built environment design on all scales.