052-0512-00L  Planning Strategies for Complex Buildings Using the Example of Health Facilities (FS)

SemesterSpring Semester 2021
LecturersT. Guthknecht
Periodicityevery semester recurring course
Language of instructionGerman
CommentThis course (ends with «00L») can only be passed once! Please check this before signing up.


AbstractHealth facility buildings are subject to extraordinary and dynamic changes. The ageing population (to name only one example of change with resulting medical effects) confronts the entire health care building infrastructure with substantial medical and economic challenges.
ObjectiveThe elective subject offers an insight to health facility planning and traverses the themes and phases of health facility planning. Special attention is given to the functionally-differentiated planning and to the planning methodology "Integral Process Design".
ContentArchitecture for health facilities supports the provision of health care for people in need for care with flexible and adaptable building concepts. The demographic changes and the changing disease patterns in the population represent particular challenges for health facility planning. Innovative organizational and building structures have to be developed to cope with these continuously changing tasks. In order to meet these requirements, the architectural functional planning of health facilities should be differentiated further. The individual elements of planning have to be adjusted in a well-balanced manner.
As a core point of planning, the functionally-differentiated planning of health facilities provides the context for the growing need of highly qualified medical services combined with reduced operational costs.
Health facility architecture can however only support the medical workflow in the best possible way. This is because a well-designed health facility can never guarantee a good medical service but a badly designed facility can hinder if not impede entirely a good medical performance.
During the design formalization of the health facility concept various aspects such as conceptual, organizational, medical, social, human, economic and technical requirements have to be reconciled. To achieve these goals, priorities must be set and landmark decisions must be taken.
With the Integral Process Design approach a functional-differentiated design concept is applied which forms the base for the intertwined and iteratively embraced overall concept of complex buildings. By using the Integral Process Design methodology the workflows, activities, functions and departments of a health facility are connected with special consideration an optimization of their interfaces. The goal is to achieve optimal work conditions from functional-medical, human, design and economic viewpoints.

The topics of the elective subject are supplemented by a series of guest lectures following specific themes of the modules. The various specialists from different sectors of health facility planning shall directly report from their experience in the field.
Lecture notesPresentation will be made available by the lecturer.