Housing as Healthcare: Mapping the correlation between housing design, microbiodiversity and health in The Hague
Informations
- Funding country
Netherlands- Acronym
- -
- URL
- -
- Start date
- 8/29/2022
- End date
- -
- Budget
- -
Fundings
| Name | Role | Start | End | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Regieorganen | Grant | - | - | - |
Abstract
People living in high-income countries spend around 70% of their time inside their home. Housing is thus a key environmental determinant for health and wellbeing. Despite this, neither the accreditation of architectural education nor the professional certification in architecture in Europe require competences focused on health promotion. Consequently, the notion of housing as healthcare has been overlooked as a key component of architectural education. To mitigate this problem, this project will explore a transdisciplinary pedagogical approach to stimulate co-creation between different academic fields and actors from society investigating the potential correlations between housing design and health. Recent research suggests that stimulating symbiotic microbial interactions with humans can promote human immunoregulation and help preventing communicable and non-communicable diseases. This project will support the development of the MSc2 elective course “Architectural Ethnography” (MSc AUBS, TU Delft), exploring collaborations between architecture and (bio-)medicine students, mapping how spatial configuration and social practices influence and are influenced by the interactions between humans, non-humans and the diversity of environmental microbiota (microorganisms that live in environments such as the soil, the air, or the water). Working in collaboration with students, teachers and researchers of Leiden University Medical Centre and Hogeschool Leiden, students will examine case study areas with different social-spatial characteristics in the city of The Hague. They will use a pioneering combination of environmental microbiome research with ethnographic research and spatial analysis. The outcome of this project will support the development of innovative educational programmes focused on co-creating Microbiome-inspired housing approaches to improve health and well-being.