ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN
Architectural design and value engineering
Solar attenuating devices have formed a key feature of many successful buildings. They have offered architects real opportunities to apply a unique character style and signature to their clients’ buildings. However, this aspect of the building’s form attracts, and is attacked by, contractors’ ubiquitous ‘value engineering’ process, thereby denuding the elevations to less responsive, economically less effective, driven forms of attenuation
Liminal spaces vs. architectural devices
Alternatively, architects have articulated the building envelope to create undercover weather protection, shading, and semi-shading zones, without the application of more expensive solar devices. These liminal spaces are transitional spaces, or ‘inside / outside’ zones – ‘in-between space’, and the time between ‘what was’ and ‘the next’. These are such spaces as verandas, porches, balconies, oriel/bay windows, porte- cochere, terraces, atria, pluvia porticos, and cloisters. A more recent nomenclature for this space has been ‘transterior’. The creation of such spaces can be harnessed to good effect for such activities as physiotherapy, occupational therapy, rehabilitation, art/music therapy, ADC (activities of daily living), and indeed spaces for ward beds to be moved into. Such spaces do not require a full internal specification, ‘U’ values, heating, fabric and finishes, and ultimately offer a real ‘value- for-money’ opportunity.
Alternative sunlight delivery Other than classical fenestration on our facades, there are often forgotten, alternative methods of delivering daylight into the heart of our buildings. These can be gainfully employed in the refurbishment of buildings, as well as on new-build projects. Daylight is clearly a precious commodity. During daytime hours, on a clear day, light levels may range from 10,000 to 100,000 Lux. In a hospital ward, in an area closest to windows, the light levels may be reduced to approximately 1000 Lux, and in the central nurse base areas, it may be as low as 25-50 Lux. It is good to remember that daylight is free, and we can harness it to illuminate deep plans, basements, and other inaccessible spaces, such as extensive Outpatient departments, Radiology spaces, operating theatre suites, endoscopy departments, NICUs, ITU’s, and CCVs etc.
Beyond traditional windows, daylight can be delivered by using alternative methods, such as light pipes, fibre optics, solar tubes, light tunnels, skylights, fixed flat glass, rooflights, reflectors, light
A sketch of a Nightingale ward at Oxford’s Radcliffe Infirmary in 1908.
shelves, and indeed mimicking daylight by specifying full spectrum artificial light, which is rapidly gaining popularity.
Conclusion
‘Light is a basic foodstuff,’ says Professor Peter Andres, Light planner, of Hamburg in Germany. ‘Light is Life’.
Originally, we humans evolved symbiotically with the sun and the related diurnal and seasonal cycles. We clearly benefited from its light and heat in multiple ways. However, in recent decades we have lost this close dialogue with the sun, and its healing, therapeutic properties. Indeed, we see it as a threat to our health, fired up by fears of cataracts, melanomas, etc. We are told that we spend 90% of our day indoors, which may well increase with the onset of
Richard Mazuch
Richard Mazuch is an architect and designer who ‘gains great satisfaction from translating holistic ideas into radical but pragmatic solutions’. An authority on healthcare, he provides profound insight into designing for global trends, patient groups, and clinical provision – informing key decisions throughout the architectural process. He has worked on numerous healthcare projects, and has been elected as a World Architecture Jury member, as well as being a University lecturer/examiner and speaker at international
conferences. With strong relationships with key health bodies, he has worked extensively with the NHS, contributing to Health Building Notes (HBNs), Health Technical Memoranda (HTMs), and the DH’s ‘Therapeutic Environment’ website features entitled ‘Sight Sensitive Design’, and Sound Sensitive Design’, that encourage designers to build evidence-based healthcare environments. A founder and champion of IBI TH!NK, he is an advocate ‘of evidence-based design creating innovations that positively impact the psychology and physiology of patient groups’. Sense Sensitive Design, Emotional Mapping, and the Design Prescription, are a few of the design tools that he has successfully pioneered. This has led to him to co-authoring new NHS guidelines for Evidence-based Design Healthcare Environments. Richard Mazuch is also a product designer, working with a plethora of manufacturers and international industry partners, advising and collaborating in the development of new materials and products such as the ‘Med Bedhead’, ‘Sensory Door’, and the ‘BedPod’, to support and improve patient care. In healthcare planning terms he has successfully developed the ‘Cruciform Ward’ – now a national standard. He has frequently worked in expert/reference groups for the King’s Fund, Prince’s Foundation, Design Council, Parliamentary Groups, and the Government Treasury Task Force, helping to develop new healthcare strategies and guidelines. He says he has successfully applied TH!NK R&D and evidence-based research ‘to numerous UK and Canadian projects’.
October 2019 Health Estate Journal 83
References 1 Let there be light. Creating Chemistry for a sustainable future, BASF, Issue Eight 2019. (
https://tinyurl.com/y4bnjmxm).
2 Walch JM, Rabin BS, Day R, Williams JN, Choi K, Kang JD. The effect of sunlight on postoperative analgesic medication use: a prospective study of patients undergoing spinal surgery. Psychosom Med 2005; Jan-Feb; 67 (1): 156-63.
3 Haque M, Sartelli M, McKimm J, Abu Bakar M. Health care-associated infections – an overview. Infect Drug Resist 2018; 11: 2321–33.
‘Climate Change. There is compelling evidence to show how sunlight can prevent and cure health conditions, both physical and psychological. Let us – as designers, architects, and health planners – embrace this challenge to good effect, and design more sensitively calibrated architecture. On 16 March this year an article in New Scientist said: ‘People with high sun exposure have higher life expectancy on average than sun avoiders’, while Cristobal Garrido, an expert on ‘Smart Daylight management’ in buildings at BASF, stated: ‘Thanks to new discoveries, architecture is on the threshold of a new era in light. It means that we can at last put the focus on people, and no longer on building.’
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