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An initiative from Architecture for Health in Vulnerable Environments (ARCHIVE) is working to decrease infectious disease rates in Bangladesh through a simple housing intervention: concrete floors. Homes with dirt or mud floors are prime gateways for gastrointestinal and parasitic pathogens, and... View full entry
Sprinkling city parks with recycled water may create a breeding ground for hard-to-treat microbes [...] Even after the recycled water is treated in a sewage plant, it may carry microbes, drug-resistance genes and antibiotics that had washed down the drain. Sprayed into the environment, that water can spread microbes that could cause difficult-to-treat infections, the researchers say. — Science News
You won’t find any stairwells tucked away into the dark corners of George Washington University’s newest academic building.
That’s because those stairs have literally taken center stage in the $75 million Milken Institute School of Public Health — designed by Boston-based Payette Architects and D.C.-based Ayers Saint Gross Architects [...] one of the first things visitors see upon entering the 115,000 square-foot building are the staircases winding every which way up a seven-story atrium.
— bizjournals.com
No matter what country you live in, everyone deserves access to safe and secure healthcare. Re-emphasizing this global issue is Building Trust International's Moved to Care competition, which sought feasible design solutions for a portable healthcare facility for high-demand regions in Southeast Asia. — bustler.net
Out of over 200 registered entrants, a U.S. multidisciplinary team consisting of Patrick Morgan, Jhanéa Williams, and Simon Morgan won the Professional category. The jury also selected nine honorable mentions from around the world.For the Student category, ‘REFLEX’ by Christopher Knitt... View full entry
Our cities are damaging our health – that's the conclusion of a new report by the Royal Institute of British Architects which looks at the impact of the built environment on obesity and life expectancy. It found that the urban conurbations with the healthiest populations [...] had half the density of housing and a fifth more green spaces than the places where people were the most unfit, such as Liverpool (the highest rate of diabetes) and Birmingham (the lowest proportion of active adults). — independent.co.uk
The winners were recently announced in the fourth annual SEED Awards for Excellence in Public Interest Design. The SEED Awards acknowledges design projects that highlight pressing social, environmental, and economic issues in the world.
Winning projects received a US$1,000 honorarium and an all-expenses-paid trip for one team representative to present at the Structures for Inclusion conference in New York City on March 22-23, 2014.
— bustler.net
The jury selected six winning projects:Pictured above: Towns Association for Environmental Quality Green Building Headquarters, Sakhnin, IsraelComunidad Ecologica Saludable, Puenta Piedra, Lima, PeruCan City, Sao Paulo, BrazilManica Football for Hope Centre, Bairro Vumba (Vumba neighborhood)... View full entry
As America's East Coast continues to recover from Hurricane Sandy, MODU's recently completed "Weather (Un)control" exhibition of the Marfa Dialogues/NY highlights an overlooked issue of the storm's aftermath that still remains: the invisible contaminants in indoor air. — bustler.net
The installation features drawings made from artificial dust and static electricity to address the current shortsighted methods for indoor air quality inspection and a "right" to better indoor air. Photos by Brett Beyer. More info at Bustler. View full entry
Seven projects have been shortlisted for the World Design Impact Prize 2013-2014. The nominated projects were unveiled during the 28th General Assembly of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (Icsid) in Montreal, Canada from Nov. 18-19.
The World Design Impact Prize raises awareness to the value of industrial design to provide solutions that address challenging global issues and social well-being.
— bustler.net
The shortlisted projects are: ABC (A Behaviour Changing) Syringe BioLite HomeStove Family By Family Laddoo Project Leveraged Freedom Chair Potty Project Refugee Housing Unit View full entry
Contemporary architecture and urban planning seem to address uncritically the conditions and context in which this discourse on health is developing. In most cases, the design disciplines rely on an abstract, scientific notion of health, and very literally adopt concepts such as “population,” “community,” “citizen,” “nature,” “green,” “development,” “city” and “body” into a professionalized, disciplinary discourse that simply echoes the ambiguities characteristic of current debate. — Places Journal
In its latest exhibition and book, Imperfect Health, the Canadian Centre for Architecture critiques what curators Mirko Zardini and Giovanna Borasi call a “new moralistic philosophy: healthism.” Zardini and Borasi trace the long relationship of environmental design to shifting social... View full entry