Health Promoting Architecture: towards health promoting and sustainable residencies for all

Objectives:
Most approaches to the built environment and health either focus on bio-chemical/physiological risk factors (environmental medicine) or on urban structures, including neighborhoods and public buildings (health promotion). However, housing structures and designs of residencies also impact on health, health relevant behaviors and well-being.

This sub-plenary will address key issues in healthy housing that include and explicitly address dwelling building structures as key components for healthy living. Health Promoting Architecture (HPA) reflects on the interplay between residential space, dwelling structures, interior design on the one hand and people’s perceptions, health relevant behaviours and well being on the other. Experts from architecture are invited to present their approaches to healthy residencies. Through interdisciplinary discussions, links will be sought that cross-fertilize theory and practice of dwelling architecture and modern health promotion.

Key message:
Architecture can contribute significantly to health promoting housing conditions. 

Links to conference theme(s):
HPA will address issues of sustainability: ideas of energy and space efficient dwelling can be extended to include the promotion of healthy behaviours. Sustainability can be understood as resulting from the interplay between material residential conditions and adequate use by residents. Equity is a key concept in HPA as we understand housing conditions to be expressions and re-iterating components of unequal chances to live a healthy life. Consequently, HPA will also be linked to issues around low income housing.
The presentations at the conference are meant to stimulate a new discourse that builds on contributions from architecture and health promotion alike.

Proposed format:
Symposium: An introduction to HPA, a key note speaker (prominent Swiss architect), a commentary by a health promotion expert and a built environment expert as an interactive panel.

Chair:

• Prof. Dr. Thomas Abel, Chair of the Swiss Scientific Committee, University of Bern Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, Bern, Switzerland

• Prof. Dr. Thomas Abel, Chair of the Swiss Scientific Committee, University of Bern Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, Bern, Switzerland

• Prof. Dietmar Eberle, Department of Architecture, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland
• Prof. Roderick Lawrence, Pôle environnement, University of Geneva, Switzerland
  Presentation (PPS, 5.99 MB)
  
• Prof. David McQueen, President International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE), Atlanta, USA
  
• Prof. Sharon Friel, National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
  Presentation (PPS, 3.97 MB)