by Heather Livingston

In 2003, the San Diego chapter of the AIA founded the Academy of Neuroscience as its legacy project to research how the human brain perceives and responds to architecture. The College of Fellows supported the enterprise by awarding the academy its Latrobe Fellowship, which comes with a purse of $100,000. To build on that body of research, the College on May 20 awarded the 2005 Latrobe Fellowship jointly to Chong Partners Architecture, the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc., and the University of California, Berkeley. The funds will support their endeavor to record “credible, applicable evidence” that proves the hypothesis that “the right design would increase revenue and reduce costs due to shorter length of stay, improved patient outcomes, staff retention, and other variables” in health-care facilities.

Explaining the project’s impetus, Gordon Chong, FAIA, principal of Chong Partners said, “While the AIA and the profession have pursued various research venues, it has never become part of the profession’s culture. As architecture becomes a more complex and knowledge-based profession, clients will begin looking for more intuitive, experiential, evidence-based design. Clients are under tremendous scrutiny and restraints to make good decisions. They need to know, ‘Is the design decision relevant and making a significant impact on sales, students, productivity, etc.?’”

Chong believes that this research has the potential to change the manner in which practitioners think and will enhance their ability to answer these questions. It will start with architect’s current skills and layer onto them evidence-based design that is more predictive about human responses to spaces and designs. “It adds science to the art to make it more relevant,” he says.

Going beyond intuition
Larry Leis, FAIA, 2005 chancellor of the College of Fellows, echoed Chong’s comments, “As architects we know intuitively how design functions in creating a healing environment, but we don’t have the research to back it up. As [Academy of Neuroscience Founding President] John Eberhard says, ‘It needs to go beyond intuition.’”

Leis also points out that for many years lack of research has spurred debate about whether architecture is a “learned profession.” This research could lead architecture toward becoming a more preeminent profession, he believes. It also will place a higher value on the architect’s services, he says, because architects will have the research and tools at their disposal to make evidence-based design decisions.

In the pilot project, Chong Partners, Kaiser, and UC-Berkeley will use psychological, sociological, and physiological measures to investigate how diverse groups of patients and staff respond to specific design characteristics. The goal of the research is “to create results that are defensible under the scrutiny of client decision makers, professionals, and academic peers.” The proposal also states that, “[the results] must directly inform design decisions. Architects need to know what to build—informed by empirical data, not conjecture—and be able to support their assertions about design impacts in order to garner client approval to implement design innovations.”

Chong considers the integrated process “one of the most important characteristics of the research.” Kaiser will provide the setting and access to patients and staff. UC-Berkeley will provide rigor for how the research is undertaken and will examine physiological as well as behavioral responses. Chong Partners will supply the design itself as well as a PhD staff person who will evaluate the physiological evidence.

Far-reaching results
Although the primary result will be evidence-based design criteria for a new hospital environment, the partners believe that the research model itself will be a critical outcome. “By piloting use of the model, including assessing and refining it during the process, the team will develop an understanding of how architectural impacts can be effectively understood and communicated,” Chong says. “We are committed to developing a model that is applicable and transferable. The methodologies that develop evidence-based design should establish predictive human responses and be transferable across the entire profession.”

“I commend the leadership of the College of Fellows for their vision in seeing the link between research and practice and understanding how research can add value to the profession as a whole,” says Chong. “I also offer my congratulations to all fellows for their support of the Latrobe Fellowship, which is, in my opinion, the most significant research grant in the profession.”

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