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 relat…