Archinect - Features

University of Illinois Graduates Aparna Pillai and Ramya Pattanur Vasudevan Propose Integrated Hospital Design for Pandemic Response

2020-08-03T13:00:00-04:00

Planning for better and more integrated healthcare design has become an important topic of discussion recently. Since COVID-19 hit, perspectives and design approaches for how to improve architectural responses to disease and illness have become paramount. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign M.Arch students Aparna Pillai and Ramya Pattanur Vasudevan explore how hospital design can help prepare and react to current and future epidemics and pandemics. Their thesis project, One Health Community Hospital, focuses on a multi-disciplinary approach to healthcare design while focusing on human, animal, and environmental domains.

Archinect connected with the duo as they share their experience working through the pandemic while focusing on a project that aims to engage with pandemic design approaches. The designers explain, "There are recurring patterns in the way epidemics, and pandemics hit us and how we react to them. Our response to such outbreaks has always been reactionary in ...

Bridging the Gap Between Architecture and Healthcare with Dr. Andrew Ibrahim and the University of Michigan's Health and Design Fellowship

2020-04-02T10:00:00-04:00

Fellowships offer individuals the opportunity to dive into specialized areas of practice where topics and ideas can be explored and fostered within the context of the university setting. Like most architectural fellowships, many fellowships engage in work that oscillates between teaching, theory, pedagogical questioning, research, and design prototyping. However the University of Michigan offers a unique fellowship opportunity that submerses a fellow into medicine and healthcare design.

Through a partnership between the University of Michigan's Department of Surgery and the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, a Health and Design Fellowship works to encourage, as program director Andrew M. Ibrahim MD, MSc. explains, a "merging of networks [...] to create an opportunity for individuals to have a foot in both doors - architecture and healthcare." Architecture and planning haven't done a good job interfacing with healthcare and healthcare policy. However, alongside our t...