By Robin Guenther

[From Architecture Boston] Design is always about transformation to an imagined future. As a practicing architect who designs hospitals, I know that the world of green building and the world of healthcare share a common mission: to protect and promote health. And I believe we can transform healthcare by building health. How? It starts with this simple shift in perspective: If we use health as the inspiration to transform practice, we can heal our hospitals and the planet.

Every innovation begins with an inspiration, and the healthcare sector needs to own this one. We all know that wellness is more than healthcare and more than physical well-being. We also know that we won’t have healthy people if we don’t have clean water, air, and soil. Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath — “First, do no harm” — making it their basis for action. But if every system took this new and certainly timely pledge — “A health system shall cause neither human nor ecological harm” — what would healthcare look like?

Imagine a world in which the delivery of healthcare created nothing but health. Unfortunately, that’s not the world we have today...(Continue reading)

Robin Guenther is a Principal at global architecture and design firm Perkins+Will and Senior Advisor at Health Care Without Harm.