Can someone explain the relationship between resilient design, regenerative design, and biophilic design?
Because I've been wondering if they are all essential to design healthcare facilities that promote public health and safety.
According to the Resilient Design Institute, resilient design is "the intentional design of buildings, landscapes, communities, and regions in order to respond to natural and manmade disasters and disturbances—as well as long-term changes resulting from climate change—including sea level rise, increased frequency of heat waves, and regional drought."
Architect and healthcare sustainable design expert Robin Guenther defines regenerative design as being "about creating a place of healing and moving beyond carbon neutrality to a development that restores ecosystems and biodiversity and improves the conditions for community health."
In an article published in Metropolis last October, biophilic design expert Stephen Kellert wrote, "Biophilic design seeks to connect our inherent need to affiliate with nature in the modern built environment. An extension of the theory of biophilia, biophilic design recognizes that our species has evolved for more than 99% of its history in adaptive response to the natural world and not to human created or artificial forces."
Where Does Sustainable Design Fit In?
Designer Hillary DeGroff thinks that biophilic design brings people into the center of the sustainability discussion.
A paper she wrote with McCall Wood states, "Understanding and implementing the knowledge of Biophilic Design is evocative because it simply tweaks the way architects and clients speak about sustainability and participate in the sustainability discussion, pushing the human experience towards the front and letting the inherently integrated economic and environmental benefits of certain sustainable design strategies to be recognized, but subtly become secondary."
Whew. That's a long sentence.
But each of these concepts -- resilient design, regenerative design, and biophilic design are essential to protecting and promoting public health and safety.
And clearly, if you're only talking about sustainability or green design, you're missing the boat.
How do you connect the dots when you're planning and designing a new or renovated healthcare facility? Perhaps RFPs should call for a design that's resilient, regenerative, AND biophilic.
Or is that too complicated?
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