Society is changing rapidly, and the healthcare sector even faster. Building for the healthcare sector means looking as far as possible into the future. But isn’t a building’s lifespan far too long for that? Dutch Hospital Design considers uncertainty about the future as our only certainty.
But what to build when nothing stays the same? However, not everything changes. The physical needs and possibilities of people have remained the same for thousands of years. As one of the most important aspects of sustainability, flexibility must be the answer based on smart solutions combined with design principles based on the primary needs of human beings, such as natural daylight, orientation and safety. Dutch Hospital Design sees making future scenarios as the way to prepare for uncertainty.
Flexibility in design
Scenarios translate the impact of trends in society, the medical profession and technology into requirements for alterations to a building in the future. The building should meet different demands in terms of initial flexibility, flexibility of the design during the building process, flexibility to change the function of parts of the building during its lifespan, and flexibility to extend or reduce the size of the building. Then we translate flexibility into integrated technical and smart solutions such as floors, facades and industrial prefabricated partition walls.
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