FROM PREVENTION TO PLANNING: AN EXPLORATION INTO MISSING ROLE OF HEALTHCARE ARCHITECT TOWARDS ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN & POST COVID19 OPTIMIZATION IN HEALTHCARE SETTINGS

Abstract

Based on the previously completed research exploring the missing role of architect from post pandemic architecture based interventions in Pakistan, the current study explored the environmental, engineering and medicine based identification of gaps towards highlighting the role of healthcare architecture integration in these domains for critical functional optimization. Since architectural role is critical to hospital optimized design considering the contextual, social and cultural needs, the short fall highlighted gaps towards missing architectural dimensions from these key areas of built environment focusing for sustainable integration in future. Exploration was based on 89 published documents from multiple Environmental Protection Agencies in Pakistan along with Pakistan Engineering Council and Pakistan Medical & Dental Council online resources. The critical keywords were based on the exploration of similar case studies in post pandemic timeline. Major gaps highlighted that the term Architecture has only been used 5 times while architect 156 times out of the total keywords count of 10971 along with evidence based design being completely missing. This gap highlights a serious concern towards lack of architectural design integration into the Environmental, Medicine, Surgical and Engineering based leading institutions framework for design and development of post pandemic architecture to be more sustainable, healthy and context responsive.
Study acts as point of intervention towards highlighted domains to better integrate post pandemic dimensions of healthcare architecture for future challenges of public at large in built environment.