The Design of Health

Architecture critic for the New York Times Michael Kimmelman joined Michael Murphy, founding principal and executive director of the design and research firm MASS Design Group, for a discussion on Murphy’s new book, The Architecture of Health, in a virtual book talk hosted by Cooper Hewitt on Tuesday. Hospitals, Murphy explained, offer unique opportunities for exploring how architecture adapts to the needs of both the individual and the public. The book’s case studies ranged from 19th century Nightingale hospitals in Crimea, the demolished Prentice Women's Hospital by Bertrand Goldberg in Chicago, the Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, to MASS’s own work designing cholera treatment centers in Haiti. Murphy described how hospitals address—or fail to address—the tricky balance of maintaining strict and systemic standards of hygiene, while still recognizing a patient’s humanity. The design of plans—labyrinthine, private, panoptic, the inclusion of windows and natural ventilation, and connection to the outside world reveal how “agency and the design of the building is related to peoples’ sense of their own health,” said Murphy.

Murphy and Kimmelman’s discussion coincides with Cooper Hewitt’s new exhibition, Design and Healing, which was organized by MASS and Cooper Hewitt senior curator and co-author of Health Design Thinking Ellen Lupton. The exhibition features the work of MASS alongside historical and contemporary examples of the intersection of design and public health, including objects from the current pandemic. Together, the exhibition and Murphy’s new publication demonstrate the significance of a growing discourse on health design that prioritizes humans, personal dignity, and social good.