Programming

Space Matrix

Concept
Worldwide hundreds of hospitals and health facilities are destroyed or damaged every year in
disasters. When a hospital fails, the affected communities are left without even basic emergency
care. Keeping a hospital safe from natural or human-made threats goes beyond protection of its
physical structure. It requires preservation of its infrastructure as well as a health workforce trained
to keep the facilities operational. Even in the event of a disaster, a safe hospital remains accessible
and able to function at maximum capacity, providing its services to the community when they are
most needed.

Resilient and sustainable design strategies for achieving this reduction in energy
through an integrated approachrange from passive design to active design
options. Passive design includes green roofs, day lighting, operable windows, and
increasing on-site trees and vegetation. Active strategy examples are mechanical
systems with heat recovery, de-coupling systems (DOAS), and renewable energy.
The operational savings of such strategies are being identified in studies that focus
on one specific strategy such as The Report on the Environmental Benefits and
Costs of Green Roof Technology for the City of Toronto (5) and the Targeting
100!(6), which integrates multiple design strategies to understand energy
reduction for a hospital in a systems view. These studies are showing that design
strategies that can mitigate the issues of acute hazards and the loss of power
ensuring a level of thermal safetycan also reduce operating costs and offer a
return on investment.
"Tying oxygen tanks to walls to make sure they don't hurt people in the event of an
earthquake, moving critical structures from the basement or first floor of a hospital to
higher floors to protect them from floods, were just some of the simple and easy to
implement solutions identified,"

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Perspective