Architecture for Health.
This summer BA Interior Architecture students Lauren Scally, Charlotte Cooper, Natalie Kerrison and Tori Shepherd participated in Architects for Health Student Design Awards 2016. The AfH Student Design Awards challenge students of both architecture and design to explore innovative and compassionate design for health and social care settings. The goal being to celebrate opportunities in health and social care for innovation and experimentation and to bring together students from different disciplines to share new thinking. Brighton was one of seven schools of architecture and design including courses in public art, interior architecture and architecture from across the UK collaborating with AfH. As well as promoting good design, AfH is also strongly committed to encouraging the next generation of architects to think, engage and develop a passion about the quality of design for health and social care settings.
Tori Shepherds project identified the importance of staff well being as well as patient. Taking the Brighton Health and Well being Centre as an example where the most problematic area was not to do with patients but was in fact the staff space. Tori’s project showed that whilst staff at the centre had gone to an incredible effort to determine patient comfort and well being, they had as a result had sacrificed their own comfort.
Laurens project looked at healthcare for the homeless by working with The Junction. This is a project in a collective, working to question and re evaluate the current state and design of GP Practices in Brighton and Hove. It works along side a research project conducted by Alex Julyan, a Fellow from the Wellcome trust. In total working with 8 practices, Laurens chosen practice was the Brighton Homeless healthcare Clinic, the only homeless clinic in Brighton. She was drawn to this practice having never considered the difficulties faced by homeless people with regards to health care. Her project looked at the comparison of how such places are presented and treated compared to other practices that cater for the general population.
A copy of the book produced by Architecture for Health containing examples of all students work is available.
https://www.architectsforhealth.com/