Review: Stalactites and Stalagmites
 Research and design collaboration requires two separate and equal approaches to successfully bridge the perennial gap between the two, writes Dr John Zeisel. This issue’s articles represent these two approaches – theoretical and applied.
One is top-down like stalactites and the other is bottom-up like stalagmites. Eventually they meet in the middle and form a firm basis for designers, researcher, their clients and the users of their buildings and open spaces to make informed decisions.
Two articles in this issue represent the top-down theoretical approach. Dilani has carried out an extensive literature review to create a “salutogenic” framework for design decision-making in healthcare and other environments. One extremely useful next step in developing salutogenic designs – those that develop and promote health and wellness as opposed to those that identify and avoid ill-health – would be for readers of WHD to begin employing the term in their work with clients and in promotional material.
The other theoretical article – Vischer and Zeisel – makes a critical distinction between traditional Programming and Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) research and evidence based design (EBD); namely that EBD puts into the hands of designers the decision over what information they find useful for design decision-making, thus avoiding the traditional judgmental nature of “evaluation” by outsiders to the design process.
A useful next step would be for us all to keep this distinction in mind when we use the term “evidence-based design”. Cormelissen and Kroop take the other approach in their study of lighting in scan rooms, fi nding that both fear of scans and the rate of scan failures are reduced when lighting is provided that better meets the emotional and biological needs of Magnetic Resonance and other scan subjects.
Of course, readers of the three articles will quickly see that the distinctions I make here are false. Both theoretical articles use detailed applied examples to make their points, and the applied article sets the stage with an extensive theoretical and neuroscience introduction. It’s just a question of where we begin – with the theory or the practice.
Both end up in the same place. Both are extremely practical contributions to the field of research and design. Design and Health is well on the way to making obsolete the historical “gap” between research and design.
Authors:
Dr John Zeisel is chair of the international advisory board of the International Academy for Design & Health and president of Hearthstone Alzheimer Care
Prof Romano Del Nord is chair of the scientific committee of the International Academy for Design & Health and deputy rector of the University of Florence
|
1.1.jpg)
|