Thesis Defence: Edwina Chen

Tuesday, October 13, 2015 5:00 pm - 5:00 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Of the thesis entitled: 

LIBRARY PLUS+
Towards the Self-Curation of Healthcare
 

Abstract:

Our heavily populated world is facing exponentially increasing healthcare demands that challenge existing healthcare infrastructure. Struggling to respond to the rapidly changing spatial needs of healthcare, the architecture of healthcare facilities, undergo frequent cycles of building renovation, reconfiguration and expansion. The relevant financial stress and resource expenditure has impelled both publicly and privately funded healthcare institutions to seek the most effective and cost effective ways to deliver quality healthcare results. However, these current resolutions such as facility focus on outpatient services and decentralization of clinical functions, imply a certain shortsighted view that architecture’s only role in healthcare is the facilitation of medical procedures.
 
Whether on the individual or collective level, healthcare is a continuous and comprehensive event that extends far beyond medical procedures that are predominately reactive in nature. Such is architecture that is capable of contributing to successful healthcare results, by providing a variety of other spatial functions and conditions. With the noticeably growing value of preventative healthcare and interest in the self-curation of healthcare, this thesis intends to redefine the traditional role of architecture in healthcare by exploring the possibility that, healthcare and the public library can be effectively integrated through architecture. By spatially conditioning the combined access and experience of diagnosis, consultation, awareness education and anticipatory data collection, architecture can become the means to maximize the potential of preventative healthcare, and proactively improve the overall health of a population.
 
Using Brooklyn Public Libraries’ Pacific Branch as an opportunity of investigation, this thesis first examines the needs and trends of both healthcare and the public library, to align their mutual interests as institutions and as building types. An unconventional program and a list of qualitative criteria are then created as the basis of a design proposal, which attempts to resolve these two apparently incompatible functions. Finally, a theoretical analysis of the proposed library renovation with added healthcare functions seems to confirm the prospect of this hybrid architecture as an appropriate strategy to begin resolving current and future healthcare challenges.
The examining committee is as follows:
 

Supervisor:

Adrian Blackwell, University of Waterloo

Committee Members:

Andrew Levitt, University of Waterloo

Matthew Spremulli, MIT
 

External Reader:

Patrick Spear



The committee has been approved as authorized by the Graduate Studies Committee.


The Defence Examination will take place:  

Tuesday October 13, 2015
5:00PM

Musagetes Library

A copy of the thesis is available for perusal in ARC 2106A.