healthy cities

The Expertise Center Architecture, Urbanism and Health is the umbrella that covers all research projects I’m participating in. The Center explores the impact of architecture and urban design on public health. According to the World Health Organization, only 10 percent of public health can be attributed to the medical infrastructure. Architecture and urbanism are to a large extent responsible for the other 90 percent.

Characteristic for the work of the Expertise Center is that it does not approach this field from the perspective of the medical sciences, but takes architecture and urbanism as a starting point. Spatial analysis, theory and history play a dominant role. The center is hosted by the University of Groningen and supported by the Faculty of Arts, the Faculty of Spatial Sciences, and the University Medical Center of Groningen. The Center covers all scale levels – the individual dwelling, the neighborhood, the district, the city and the region – and targets a wide range of building types – buildings without a medical function, semi-medical functions and healthcare facilities. In practice, it oscillates between two poles: the urban environment (‘healthy cities’), and healthcare architecture.

The sense of place, its use and the way it is perceived by its users play a fundamental role all our reseaerch projects. Digital analysis tools as well as virtual reality to assess the impact of planned interventions are key.