Territories of Engagement in the Design of Ecohumanist Healthcare Environments.

BACKGROUND: Increasingly, architectural and allied designers, engineers, and healthcare facility administrators are being challenged to demonstrate success in adroitly identifying and contextualizing ever-shifting and expanding spheres of knowledge with respect to the role of energy conservation and carbon neutrality in healthcare treatment environments and their immediate exterior environs.

AIM: This calls for making sense of an unprecedented volume of information on building energy usage and interdigitizing complex and at times contradictory goals with the daily requirements of building occupants. Ecohumanist Design Strategies: In response, a multidimensional framework is put forth with the aim of advancing theory and practice in the realm of designers', direct caregivers', and administrators' engagement with ecohumanist design strategies in the creation of ecohumanist healthcare environments.

CONCLUSIONS: Ten territories for engagement are presented that both individually and collectively express salient themes and streams of inquiry in theory and practice, within an operative framework placing the patient, the patient's significant others, and the caregiver at the center of the relationship between the built environment and occupant well-being.