The Future Renaissance of Healthcare Facilities

Prof Arch Romano Del Nord
Deputy Rector University of Florence-Italy

The (future) Re-naissance of Healthcare Facilities  (click to download full paper)

Envisaging future trends in healthcare culture and design in order to influence scientific research is one of the aims of the Design & Health community. To this end we focus our commitment towards the understanding of the most likely developments in the future of healthcare politics and economics. Today’s reality shows that the sustainability issue is strongly influencing future strategies and shaping the design solutions of the Third Millennium Hospital.

It is a fact that the building industry is responsible for 50% of the world’s generation of CO2: to respond to this critical scenario the European Union Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings has established new targets to reduce primary energy use by 15% from 2000 to 2010 in its new and existing buildings.

On top of this, hospital management produce a concerning amount of waste that take up resources and energies. It is indeed a critical issue to introduce a new cost effective green approach as a significant incentive to design and manage to improve the hospital’s energy efficiency.

Sustainability is broadly defined as meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. In 2001, in accordance with the precepts of biodiversity, UNESCO has introduced the concept of “cultural diversity” that, “as a source of innovation, creativity and exchange, is the key to a mutually enriching future for humankind”.

I would like to expand the UNESCO message and widen the traditional sustainable debate, based on energy performance, to a deep understanding of ‘cultural diversity’ as an innovative interdisciplinary policy and practice that apply the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development within cultural heritage projects. Re-using or updating old hospitals lessens the amount of energy used on new development and avoids high levels of construction waste. Besides, our cultural heritage can boost local economies, attract investment, highlight local identity and promote civic pride.

It is therefore vital to implement research into new technologies able to understand the needs to support this new visions of healthcare design. It is also important to orient research and project strategies towards the correct re-use of historical hospitals.

According to this aim, the presentation will be focused on the different approaches recently developed in the modernisation of important and famous healthcare facilities.