2008 NCARB Prize Winner:
Clemson University
"Architecture+Health Program"

Healthcare facilities constitute a significant percent of total construction expenditures in the United States today. Even before the recent building boom in healthcare facilities, there existed a critical shortage of architects with experience and knowledge in this specialized and complex area of architectural practice. Many architects working in this area of practice have had no formal education or educational experience in healthcare architecture; and they rarely come into practice with a thorough understanding of the potential impact architecture can have on human health and wellbeing. Architecture firms are desperately seeking architecture school graduates and practitioners with the experience necessary to meet current and future needs in the profession. Schools of Architectural have generally not met the profession’s need for specialized training and practice in this focus area. Given the complexity, and rapid changes in this area of practice, professional education and training can not occur in isolation from practice. At the same time, the profession also needs academia to help generate new knowledge in healthcare architecture and the healthful design of architecture in general.

This submission is for an entire program of study at a NAAB accredited School of Architecture - a professional degree concentration in Architecture + Health. Three “projects” executed in the program are submitted for review as examples of how this program embodies a systemic and comprehensive approach toward bringing the academy and profession together. The Green Health Clinic for the Joseph P. Sullivan Center represents an interdisciplinary collaboration of architecture and landscape architecture students and faculty with professionals and clients in a linked series of programming, health administration, and studio courses on a public service learning project. The Patient Room Prototype project engages architecture, industrial design and fine arts students and faculty with a wide variety of professionals, sponsors, and industry constituencies on a multi-year design-build-research initiative. The studio/seminar project Building in the City – Building as City: LSUHSC and DVA Replacement Campuses for post Katrina New Orleans demonstrates how a large complex actual healthcare project can intensively connect students and faculty with professionals through linked seminar and studio courses in a single semester.

These initiatives are collectively and individually intended to demonstrate leadership within the discipline for the range, depth and breadth of projects and learning experiences. They also demonstrate a consistent level of design excellence possible in this area of professional study and practice. The Architecture + Health program is modeled as closely as possible on medical education, where teaching, research and professional practice has been seamlessly interwoven since the beginning of the 20th century. These projects demonstrate ways in which teaching, research and professional practice must and can be seamlessly interwoven with studio and course-based learning experiences.

Project Abstract

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