The role of Sustainable Hospital Architecture in Pandemic Times: Case Study in Hospitals
COVID-19, Architecture, Urbanism, sustainability, health, hospitals, sustainable methods, pandemics
The work aims to reflect on the potential of the principles and expanded vision of architecture and urbanism applied to health and the multiple dimensions of sustainability in times of facing the COVID-19 pandemic. Both the architecture of health and sustainability are relatively recent concepts that, despite having been initially proposed by the biological and health sciences, were quickly incorporated by other areas of knowledge due to the inter and transdisciplinary possibilities of their principles and foundations. Despite the historical approach showing that throughout several epidemics, architecture and urbanism developed control measures as was the case with the hygienist concepts of modern architecture, with the advent of new medical technologies and medicines, medicine was emancipated from architecture. Currently, the return to architecture and urbanism practices as a way of preventing and controlling epidemics has been an essential tool through observation and application at the most diverse scales of the built environment in the search for more resilient and sustainable spaces. The dissertation was divided into 3 main chapters in which the main concepts will be addressed: Hospital Architecture, Sustainability and Pandemic and a 4th chapter on case study development in hospitals that seeks results and guidelines for developments in the area. From the methodological point of view, it is a bibliographic research procedure, with an exploratory objective and a qualitative approach. The study indicates that, due to the depth and complexity of the crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, a health architecture focused on sustainability in all its dimensions will be increasingly necessary, being essential for understanding the current crisis and for the search for solutions that will form the basis for new public policies and decision-making.