Bench-to-Bedside: Translating Medicine, Motivating Patients & Sustaining Environments

Vancouver’s University of British Columbia Centre for Brain Health is a 135,000-square-foot clinical research facility containing wet and dry labs in addition to patient clinics, all of which are dedicated to neurological and psychiatric diseases ranging from Lou Gehrig’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s to resistive Psychosis. Designing environments for the treatment and cure of chronic neurological disorders are among the greatest challenges in healthcare architecture, made even more so when the driving vision for this institution was to have 100% patient participation in research. Three aspects aligned to support that vision and advance a new building typology: Translating Medicine, Motivating Patients, and Sustaining Environments. This paper addresses each aspect with the belief that when the fields of education and healthcare architecture overlap, this triad must be considered in order to achieve true design excellence.
This article originally appeared in The Academy Journal, published by the AIA Academy of Architecture for Healthcare (15th edition, 2012).