Links changes in the sites at which medical services are offered to changes in medical practice, in medical economics, and in patterns of American commerce and urbanism. [back cover].

Examines five areas of Americans' built environment and looks at the relationships of size and scale to the way Americans live their lives.

From the parking lot to the exam room, doctors can improve the physical surroundings for their patients, yet often they do not. Given the numerous and varied duties doctors must perform, it may fall to the design profession to implement changes, many based on research, to improve healthcare experiences. From location and layout to furnishings and positive distractions, this book provides evidence-based information about the physical environment to help doctors and those who design medical workspaces improve the experience of health care. Along with its research base, a special aspect of this book is the integration of relevant historical material about the office practice of physicians at the beginning of the twentieth century. Many of their design solutions are viable today. In addition to improving the physical design of healthcare facilities, author Ann Sloan Devlin is the granddaughter, daughter, and niece of physicians, as well as the granddaughter and daughter of nurses. She worked in a hospital during college, and has visited a good many practitioners’ offices in medical office buildings and ambulatory care settings. This book addresses an overlooked location of care: the doctor’s office suite.

Rise of the Modern Hospital is a focused examination of hospital design in the United States from the 1870s through the 1940s. This understudied period witnessed profound changes in hospitals as they shifted from last charitable resorts for the sick poor to premier locations of cutting-edge medical treatment for all classes, and from low-rise decentralized facilities to high-rise centralized structures. Jeanne Kisacky reveals the changing role of the hospital within the city, the competing claims of doctors and architects for expertise in hospital design, and the influence of new medical theories and practices on established traditions. She traces the dilemma designers faced between creating an environment that could function as a therapy in and of itself and an environment that was essentially a tool for the facilitation of increasingly technologically assisted medical procedures. Heavily illustrated with floor plans, drawings, and photographs, this book considers the hospital building as both a cultural artifact, revelatory of external medical and social change, and a cultural determinant, actively shaping what could and did take place within hospitals.

Contemporary architecture of theme-based design is examined in this book, leading to a new understanding of architecture's role in the increasingly diversified consumer environment. It explores the ‘Experience Economy’ to reveal how everyday environments strategically and opportunistically blur our leisure, work, and personal life experiences. Considering scientific design research, consumer psychology, and Hollywood story-telling techniques, the book looks at how the design of theme parks, casinos, and shopping malls has influenced our more unexpectedly themed spaces, from the city to the hospital. Widely taking architecture as a social practice, this text is of relevance to all cultural and sociological studies in the built and material environment.

This comprehensive history of medicine and public health in America covers changes and developments over four centuries, from the arrival of the first Europeans to the twenty-first century.

Design for Health: Sustainable Approaches to Therapeutic Architecture Guest-Edited by Terri Peters This issue of AD seeks out innovative and varied sustainable architectural responses to designing for health, such as: integrating sensory gardens and landscapes into the care environment; specifying local materials and passive technologies; and reinvigorating aging postwar facilities. Contributors include: Anne-Marie Adams, Sean Ahlquist, Giuseppe Boscherini, Robin Guenther, Charles Jencks, Richard Mazuch, Stephen Verderber, Featured architects: 100% Interior, Arup, C.F. Møller, Lyons, MASS Design Group, Mongomery Sisam Architects, Penoyre & Prasad