Founded on the idea that the places we live, work and play have the power to determine our health outcomes, “Architects as Healers, Buildings as Medicine” is a global collective of architects, interior designers, planners, healthcare practitioners, artists and educators devoted to designing places that enhance wellbeing and collective health outcomes.
Opportunities for salutogenesis, or design for health, occur at every scale: pristine versus poor air quality, walk-able versus drivable cities, hospitals with nature views versus a brick wall—all are examples of how the environment enhances or detracts from quality of life and longevity. To ignore these as design opportunities in the built environment is to ignore the public health crisis bubbling up in the form of obesity, chronic stress, inflammatory disease and mental health decline.
Because human evolution has not caught up to modern convenience, shelter has depreciated from human sanctuary to a comorbidity. Our hunter-gatherer brains crave nature 24/7 (also known as a term called biophilia), we’re hard-wired for constant vigilance and negative bias: (that stick is a snake!) and human bodies are designed to walk anywhere from nine to 12 miles a day.
When modern life leaves us indoors 90% of the time without opportunities for regular movement, it leads to elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which causes chronic inflammation that contributes to poor health outcomes and disease.
The architecture profession says “I Look Up”, but the way forward is LOVE: Look Outside to Voices of Everyone. We aim to equip the profession with evidence-based design strategies grounded in neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and behavioral economics so architects have the power to hack the human experience for positive health outcomes in the built environment. This is how Architects become Healers, and Buildings become Medicine.
Testimonial for Architects as Healers
“Megan co-hosts the ‘Architects as Healers: Buildings as Medicine‘ podcast along with architect Angela Mazzi Monday mornings on Clubhouse. I have been both a participant on it and a frequent listener. Their guests range from established voices in architecture, design and construction whose work is cutting edge, delving into how spaces influence our well-being, to researchers and practitioners who are doing extremely valuable work, with quite perceptive insights whom I have never heard of prior, and whose work I’m eagerly compelled to follow from then on. As a WELL AP and individual living with a chronic condition, Megan brings her own experience to bear on how wellbeing is affected and shaped by architecture. I commend Megan and Angela for creating a space that fills a critical need of understanding this nexus, that is informative and non-judgmental and has contributed vastly to our collective knowledge.”
–Ganesh S. Nayak, AIA, NOMA, LEED AP, GGP, NGBS, Energy Star MF, ICC Accessibility Specialist & Principal, Metier Consulting, Inc.