Architects harness health data to prioritize design decisions
Perkins&WillChallenge
Perkins&Will is the 2nd largest design and architecture firm in the world, with a goal of designing structures and interiors that improve the built environment within communities and make a positive difference in peoples’ daily lives. Their design and architecture work spans industries ranging from transportation structures, to hospitals, hotels, higher education, and more. Though Perkins&Will designers have wanted to integrate a health framework into their designs and decision-making, they have been limited by relevant data resources and team capacity. Historically, they have had to rely on multiple sources to find health information on the cities and neighborhoods they were working in, but it has been time-consuming to do so, especially during the proposal phase of a project when time is extremely limited and health context is not technically a project requirement. They needed a way to research community context with trusted data that was frequently updated and could act as a one-stop shop that gathered a diverse set of information together in one place.
The accessible metrics provided by the City Health Dashboard help to create a consistent vocabulary for how our teams understand and talk about health and societal demographics across different project typologies and regions. This allows us to tailor design strategies to the specific needs of building occupants, and measure the impact of our designs more consistently.
David Cordell, Associate Principal, Washington D.C. Studio
Impact
The City Health Dashboard has been just that tool for Perkins&Will designers who are aiming to build more resilient, adaptive places. Exploring wide ranging Dashboard metrics, including frequent mental and physical distress, diabetes, breast cancer and cardiovascular disease deaths, absenteeism, neighborhood residential segregation, and income inequality (to name a few), in a flexible, user-friendly interface has allowed designers and teams to better understand the health, socioeconomic, and demographic context of communities.
Perkins&Will staff have taken this information a step further by documenting these health priorities and how their design might impact the health of local residents in their proposals to clients, ultimately setting themselves apart from competitors. Though this health framework approach is nascent, Perkins&Will hopes that by integrating public health data into the design process, health equity-focused design will become more widespread and intentional across the firm and the architecture industry as a whole.
