Inform launches this month with the Energy Issue and we’re excited to profile the incredible work being generated in Virginia.
We’re now seeking contributors for our Wellness Issue.
Articles should be between 300-1,000 words (depending on the topic) and may link to outside sources — including your firm or university website. Content may be edited for style and accuracy.
Content Guidelines
Our goal is to help highlight our members’ contributions to the built environment to each other and to the public, so it is ideal to highlight methods, research, and materials that elevate the overall understanding of a particular typology or approach.
We ask our contributors to avoid marketing or sales-oriented language (as well as “archi-speak”) in submitted pieces, however you are welcomed —even encouraged — to credit consultants or products that contributed to the overall success of the project.
We’d ask you to share images of your work or research. We prefer images to be at least 650 pixels wide and ask that you include any necessary image credits.
Let us know if you want to contribute by April 30. The content deadline is May 13. Questions? Contact Rhea George.
Inform celebrates Virginia’s rich culture of design and the diverse individuals who shape it.
As the health care debate rages on in the public arena, chronic disease and illness are threatening to overwhelm the health care system. The cost of treating diseases like obesity, asthma, diabetes and heart disease is an enormous financial burden on the economy. Most of us recognize that architecture can have an impact on health, but what if it could actually make us healthier? What if it could help prevent disease? Reduce violence? Increase productivity? Architecture Exchange East, the Society’s annual conference and design expo, announces Tye Farrow, an internationally recognized expert in salutogenic design, as the keynote speaker.
For those not familiar, it may be easiest to understand the word salutogenic by first defining its opposite. If pathogenic is disease-causing, then salutogenic is health-causing. Salutogenic design focuses on creating, enhancing and improving physical, mental and social well-being through well designed and planned environments — environments where making healthy, sustainable choices is easy. Farrow, senior partner with the Farrow Partnership, has gained international recognition for the design of public and private sector buildings that enhance health.
The concept of salutogenic design moves beyond conventional notions of sustainability to encompass not just the building’s impact on the environment, but also its impact on users. It becomes another measure of good design. “… we’re no longer going to settle for design that is simply profitable, or efficient, or sustainable, or programmatically compliant, or any of a dozen other measures of design success,” says Ray Pentecost, FAIA, the Society’s Vice President for Professional Excellence, in an interview with Bill Mallard in Architect magazine. “We are going to look for design standards that address and respect public health.” And the idea doesn’t just apply to hospitals, but to the workplace, schools, institutions, and homes. Now that sustainable design has moved from a niche specialty to something expected — even demanded — by clients, Pentecost believes that salutogenic design is the next great wave of theory and practice.
Farrow will present his keynote address at Architecture Exchange East on Thursday, Nov. 8 at Architecture Exchange East in Richmond, Virginia. Watch www.archex.net for information and registration details. The ArchEx Keynote Address is sponsored by Scott Long Construction.
About Tye Farrow
Tye Farrow
Farrow has designed award-winning projects across Canada and around the world. Recently, the Stockholm-based World Congress on Design and Health identified him as a global leader who is making “a significant contribution to health and humanity through the medium of architecture and design.”
His groundbreaking approach to promoting wellness at the Credit Valley Hospital and Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre in Canada is viewed internationally as setting a new standard for health care design.
His work has been published in the British journals Architectural Review Magazine, AD Architectural Design and HD Hospital Development. He has been designated by The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business magazine as one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40; recognizing Canada’s “best and brightest.” The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) in the United Kingdom selected Farrow’s design for Credit Valley Hospital as 2007’s Best International Design.
He holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Toronto, and a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard University.
The AIA/AAH Design Awards showcase the best of healthcare building design and healthcare design-oriented research. The awards highlight the trends of healthcare facilities and the future direction of these facilities. Projects should exhibit conceptual strength that solve aesthetic, civic, urban, and social concerns as well as the requisite functional and sustainability concerns of a hospital. The AIA/AAH will recognize the firms for their contribution to the healthcare environment.
Submit your project or research for the 2012 National Healthcare Design Awards program. Projects should exhibit conceptual strength that address aesthetic, civic, urban, and social concerns as well as the requisite functional and sustainability requirements of a healthcare facility.
Award Categories
A: Built, less than $25 million (construction cost)
B: Built, more than $25 million (construction cost)
C: Unbuilt
D: Innovations in Planning and Design Research (built or unbuilt)
Submission
The submission deadline date of 4:59:59 p.m. ET, Monday, Dec. 19, 2011, will be strictly observed; no exceptions will be made. No entry fee will be refunded for entries that are disqualified, late, or not completed. Payments and submissions will only be accepted online.
Please review the 2012 AIA Healthcare Design Awards walk-through documents before beginning your submission.
Jocelyn Frederick, AIA, (Chair) – Tsoi/Kobus & Associates, Cambridge, Massachusetts
John Castorina, AIA – RTKL Associates, Inc., Dallas
R. David Frum, AIA – Clark/Kjos Architects, Seattle
Anthony Kelly, AIA – The Shore Health System, Easton, Maryland
Susan Lipka – The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston
Steven Steinberg, AIA – Ratcliff Architects, Emeryville, California
Bobbe Young – Steffian Bradley Architects, Boston
