Architects can play a major role in creating more livable, sustainable and healthy communities through health by design.
Architects can help create healthy communities. When people think of health, often the first thing that comes to mind is the medical industry, doctors, nurses and those who make us healthy when we are unwell. Let’s turn that model on its head and instead examine a very important preventive strategy to help people from becoming sick — designing healthy communities. Architects are a key part of a wellness strategy that focuses less on intervention when people are sick and more on how to keep people healthy and out of doctors’ offices and hospitals in the first place.
Design is preventive medicine. The architects’ role is not only to design exceptional healthcare facilities, but to also design communities that promote wellness. We as a nation have been spending billions of dollars on drugs and other medical innovations to cure those that have become ill. With healthcare costs in the U.S. projected to grow toward nearly 20 percent of GDP by 2020, can we really afford to continue down this current path?