Architecture, Health and Design, M.S.

Prerequisite: Corequisites: ARCH 751

This is a Health and Design Studio, ARCH 701C, in the Master of Science in Health and Design program. This studio focuses on the design and prototyping innovative configurations and material assemblages of spaces for health and wellness. This studio is supported by clinical professionals and design consultants from other Schools and Colleges in NYIT, other academic partners in the New York City region, and industry collaborators with specific expertise to join the studio. Benefiting from introductory lab workshops on alternative approaches to materiality, multidisciplinary design, computational and technological augmentation, students acquire transformative skills for a series of experimental design products at many scales in this studio. Knowledge gained in core seminars is to be folded into the methodologies and products developed in this semester. Informed by a complex set of briefing agencies to prototype spaces, design work in this studio will be generated in relation to dynamic environmental qualities at various scales. This design studio is concerned with how spaces should be more responsive in regards to users with special abillities, and confronting practices with biases for standard, normative body types, and improving the capacity for mobility and access. The outcomes of this studio include a series of various scale design products, as ergonomic and kinesiologic formations, leading to spatial networks, and ultimately, configured as inclusive design.

Classroom Hours - Laboratory and/or Studio Hours – Course Credits: 2-6-6

This core course, ARCH 753, focuses on the history and theory related to designing for health, at the intersection of methodologies, design commonalities and specificities, between health and disease of our bodies, minds and the mutually reciprocal relationship to the healthiness of our built environments. Principles of holistic design for health, as well as some of the key tools and design approaches are introduced in this course. Aiming to introduce a history of health institutions and their associated spaces, the course will develop expertise with which to address common challenges faced by aging or users with special abilities through universal or inclusive design, confronting the notion of a normative, standardized, and idealized human body. A contemporary human-centered approach to designing spaces for wellness challenges the practice of standardization in architectural and interior spaces, including standards of healthcare. Architectural spaces are conventionally designed for normative bodies, generally dismissing diversity and special abilities as limiting factors in how people use and move through spaces. Built spaces, products, and clothing are all based on dimensions and measurements of averaged and often idealized bodies. There persists an unconscious practice of bias, based on standardized, normative body features, dimensions, and capacities. Designing for people with special abilities environments, services, and products has to be practiced in such a way that they can be used by all people to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design. Students examine the major health barriers and their spatial consequences, affecting the design of spaces. The ways in which architectural and interior spaces have contributed throughout history to our well-being or dis-ease form the overall focus of this core course. The course surveys the disciplinary domains of the design of institutional design, architectural and interior spaces, mobility schemes and devices, medical products, interfaces, fabrics, wearables, and clothing, material systems, service design and smart systems.

Classroom Hours - Laboratory and/or Studio Hours – Course Credits: 3-0-3

In the course ARCH 754 students engage in explorations of the built environment, the health ecosystem and both its linked stakeholders, the processes and relationships which are undertaken as a transdisciplinary, silo-leaping inquiry into the origins, emergence and differences in health. While new science aligns health states a result of the longitudinal impact of the environment and lifestyle of individuals, correlations between design and disease are investigated by mapping user experiences and affective capacities, thereby evaluating all the good or bad encounters and flows that enhance and diminish health and wellbeing over the life course. The class learns and explores emerging methods in order to identify how urban, architecture or health system affectors translate into design practices for the built environment that induce health disparities and general negative health impacts among individuals. Besides qualitative data and inquiries into human experiences, also quantitative and population data via federal and open access databases or imaging data will be integrated with data visualization to facilitate change effective strategies and communications.

Classroom Hours - Laboratory and/or Studio Hours – Course Credits: 3-0-3

This course, ARCH 757 of the Master of Science of Architecture, Health and Design program, examines materials’ role on our health from both a systemic perspective and an embodied perspective, and offers students the framework, tools, and skills to develop materials and analyze material processes and systems in order to advance personal and social wellbeing. In the seminar students will learn, analyze, research, displace and investigate circular paradigms in materiality applied to architecture, as a regenerative material system which should lead to more resilient ecosystems, reducing the embodied carbon footprint, saving natural resources and ultimately promoting health and wellbeing, through reuse, repair and recycling.This seminar will focus on material properties, behavior and characteristics through environmental simulation and optimization, structural simulation and optimization, studies the properties of material composites, hybrid materials, and polymers. Examined from an embodied perspective, materials, and the environments they compose, have properties that promote or inhibit certain kinesthetic and cognitive behaviors, as well physiological and affective responses.

Classroom Hours - Laboratory and/or Studio Hours – Course Credits: 3-1-3

Prerequisite: Prerequisites: ARCH 701C Corequisites: ARCH 752

This is a Health and Design Studio, ARCH 702C, in the Master of Science in Health and Design program. This studio focuses on the design and prototyping of innovative configurations and material assemblages of spaces for health and wellness. This studio is supported by clinical professionals and design consultants from other Schools and Colleges in NYIT, other academic partners in the New York City region, and industry collaborators with specific expertise to join the studio. Benefiting from introductory lab workshops on alternative approaches to materiality, multidisciplinary design, computational and technological augmentation, students acquire transformative skills for a series of experimental design products at many scales in this studio. Knowledge gained in core seminars is to be folded into the methodologies and products developed in this semester. Informed by a complex set of briefing agencies to prototype spaces, design work in this studio will be generated in relation to dynamic environmental qualities at various scales. This design studio is concerned with how spaces should be more responsive in regards to users with special abillities, and confronting practices with biases for standard, normative body types, and improving the capacity for mobility and access. The outcomes of this studio include a series of various scale design products, as ergonomic and kinesiologic formations, leading to spatial networks, and ultimately, configured as inclusive design.

Classroom Hours - Laboratory and/or Studio Hours – Course Credits: 2-6-6

Prerequisite: Corequisites: ARCH 702C

This course ARCH 752, does investigate the care framework, from structure to process to outcome. The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has provided a powerful test of resiliency of our social, public health and governance systems. The future will continue to present compounding challenges for our unprepared and inefficient healthcare systems with natural disasters, an escalating baby-boomer retirement population and a diminishing clinical workforce. This course and its modules utilize design thinking methodologies with a systems and technology approach to enable non-design and design disciplines alike, working together, acquire the expertise and tools for the development of innovative and reliable healthcare ecosystem solutions, products, services, and environments. The skill building approach is considering a growing demand in the workforce of the health spectrum from professional development for health practitioners in addition to opening up new pathways to the health fields with stackable credentials and degree programs. The lab will also introduce principles and practices of collaborative design, across design and health, including clinical providers and designers, and other disciplinary arenas. Experimenting on a co-design mode of crossing disciplinary practices will be built into the ethos of the teaching, with a goal to achieve design solutions, made possible by multiple contributors with diverse disciplinary expertise. In a series of intensive lecture and lab sessions, this workshop will provide readings and resources with additional opportunity to deepen knowledge. An abundance of expert guidance and hands-on material will provide learners with useful context and detail to support interactive discussions. The reading materials will include strategic books, peer review papers, chapters, scientific meeting proceedings.

Classroom Hours - Laboratory and/or Studio Hours – Course Credits: 3-1-3

This course, ARCH 755, introduces concepts, computation, and tools with capacities to affect environmental qualities. Students will be introduced to a toolbox that can be applied to the measurement of people-based environmental attributes, daylight and artificial light, color, temperature, air quality, flows, and other environmental properties and their processes, as well as a set of skills that simulate environmental behaviors in space. In a series of technical software tutorials, methods are introduced for simulating options in relation to varying criteria and constraining parameters to map out a solution space of possibilities rather than a single optimal solution. Introducing students to environmental qualities and their impact on human well-being, these notions are key concepts to base innovations in the architecture and design of healthcare spaces. In addition to learning simulation software applied to environmental qualities, this course is pedagogically organized to include seminar discussions around particular themes and readings, including nature, environments, atmosphere, and design intelligence, as well as problem-based short design exercises on case studies, worked on in groups of students.

Classroom Hours - Laboratory and/or Studio Hours – Course Credits: 3-1-3

Designing Therapeutic Interactions, 756 course, focuses on the research, design, and development of interactive environments and products that aid individuals with cognitive or physical disabilities. The course is structured around lectures on disabilities and therapeutic interventions, and hands-on workshops on prototype development using sensors and microcontrollers, computing, and material fabrication methods. Students have opportunities to work closely with health experts and nonprofit organizations to develop a better understanding of specific health conditions and ways they can contribute through design and technology innovation, and user-centered research. The course Is complemented by lectures from professionals in user-centered design, business and innovation, bioengineering, and other fields pertaining to designed therapeutic interventions. By the end of the course students gain a better understanding of how their design skills can be applied towards health and wellbeing solutions with social impact and are also equipped with good basic programming and electronic skills to integrate sensory interaction methods in future design projects. There are no prerequisites for the course. No prior knowledge of electronics or programming is required.

Classroom Hours - Laboratory and/or Studio Hours – Course Credits: 2-1-3

Curriculum Requirements

Major Requirements

Term One		Credits:
ARCH 701C	Health and Design Studio	6
Prerequisite: Corequisites: ARCH 751 This is a Health and Design Studio, ARCH 701C, in the Master of Science in Health and Design program. This studio focuses on the design and prototyping innovative configurations and material assemblages of spaces for health and wellness. This studio is supported by clinical professionals and design consultants from other Schools and Colleges in NYIT, other academic partners in the New York City region, and industry collaborators with specific expertise to join the studio. Benefiting from introductory lab workshops on alternative approaches to materiality, multidisciplinary design, computational and technological augmentation, students acquire transformative skills for a series of experimental design products at many scales in this studio. Knowledge gained in core seminars is to be folded into the methodologies and products developed in this semester. Informed by a complex set of briefing agencies to prototype spaces, design work in this studio will be generated in relation to dynamic environmental qualities at various scales. This design studio is concerned with how spaces should be more responsive in regards to users with special abillities, and confronting practices with biases for standard, normative body types, and improving the capacity for mobility and access. The outcomes of this studio include a series of various scale design products, as ergonomic and kinesiologic formations, leading to spatial networks, and ultimately, configured as inclusive design. Classroom Hours - Laboratory and/or Studio Hours – Course Credits: 2-6-6
ARCH 753	History and Theory of Design for Health	3
This core course, ARCH 753, focuses on the history and theory related to designing for health, at the intersection of methodologies, design commonalities and specificities, between health and disease of our bodies, minds and the mutually reciprocal relationship to the healthiness of our built environments. Principles of holistic design for health, as well as some of the key tools and design approaches are introduced in this course. Aiming to introduce a history of health institutions and their associated spaces, the course will develop expertise with which to address common challenges faced by aging or users with special abilities through universal or inclusive design, confronting the notion of a normative, standardized, and idealized human body. A contemporary human-centered approach to designing spaces for wellness challenges the practice of standardization in architectural and interior spaces, including standards of healthcare. Architectural spaces are conventionally designed for normative bodies, generally dismissing diversity and special abilities as limiting factors in how people use and move through spaces. Built spaces, products, and clothing are all based on dimensions and measurements of averaged and often idealized bodies. There persists an unconscious practice of bias, based on standardized, normative body features, dimensions, and capacities. Designing for people with special abilities environments, services, and products has to be practiced in such a way that they can be used by all people to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design. Students examine the major health barriers and their spatial consequences, affecting the design of spaces. The ways in which architectural and interior spaces have contributed throughout history to our well-being or dis-ease form the overall focus of this core course. The course surveys the disciplinary domains of the design of institutional design, architectural and interior spaces, mobility schemes and devices, medical products, interfaces, fabrics, wearables, and clothing, material systems, service design and smart systems. Classroom Hours - Laboratory and/or Studio Hours – Course Credits: 3-0-3
ARCH 754	Body, Mind, and Built Environments	3
In the course ARCH 754 students engage in explorations of the built environment, the health ecosystem and both its linked stakeholders, the processes and relationships which are undertaken as a transdisciplinary, silo-leaping inquiry into the origins, emergence and differences in health. While new science aligns health states a result of the longitudinal impact of the environment and lifestyle of individuals, correlations between design and disease are investigated by mapping user experiences and affective capacities, thereby evaluating all the good or bad encounters and flows that enhance and diminish health and wellbeing over the life course. The class learns and explores emerging methods in order to identify how urban, architecture or health system affectors translate into design practices for the built environment that induce health disparities and general negative health impacts among individuals. Besides qualitative data and inquiries into human experiences, also quantitative and population data via federal and open access databases or imaging data will be integrated with data visualization to facilitate change effective strategies and communications. Classroom Hours - Laboratory and/or Studio Hours – Course Credits: 3-0-3
ARCH 757	Materials	3
This course, ARCH 757 of the Master of Science of Architecture, Health and Design program, examines materials’ role on our health from both a systemic perspective and an embodied perspective, and offers students the framework, tools, and skills to develop materials and analyze material processes and systems in order to advance personal and social wellbeing. In the seminar students will learn, analyze, research, displace and investigate circular paradigms in materiality applied to architecture, as a regenerative material system which should lead to more resilient ecosystems, reducing the embodied carbon footprint, saving natural resources and ultimately promoting health and wellbeing, through reuse, repair and recycling.This seminar will focus on material properties, behavior and characteristics through environmental simulation and optimization, structural simulation and optimization, studies the properties of material composites, hybrid materials, and polymers. Examined from an embodied perspective, materials, and the environments they compose, have properties that promote or inhibit certain kinesthetic and cognitive behaviors, as well physiological and affective responses. Classroom Hours - Laboratory and/or Studio Hours – Course Credits: 3-1-3
		Total: 15 Credits

Term Two		Credits:
ARCH 702C	Health and Design Studio	6
Prerequisite: Prerequisites: ARCH 701C Corequisites: ARCH 752 This is a Health and Design Studio, ARCH 702C, in the Master of Science in Health and Design program. This studio focuses on the design and prototyping of innovative configurations and material assemblages of spaces for health and wellness. This studio is supported by clinical professionals and design consultants from other Schools and Colleges in NYIT, other academic partners in the New York City region, and industry collaborators with specific expertise to join the studio. Benefiting from introductory lab workshops on alternative approaches to materiality, multidisciplinary design, computational and technological augmentation, students acquire transformative skills for a series of experimental design products at many scales in this studio. Knowledge gained in core seminars is to be folded into the methodologies and products developed in this semester. Informed by a complex set of briefing agencies to prototype spaces, design work in this studio will be generated in relation to dynamic environmental qualities at various scales. This design studio is concerned with how spaces should be more responsive in regards to users with special abillities, and confronting practices with biases for standard, normative body types, and improving the capacity for mobility and access. The outcomes of this studio include a series of various scale design products, as ergonomic and kinesiologic formations, leading to spatial networks, and ultimately, configured as inclusive design. Classroom Hours - Laboratory and/or Studio Hours – Course Credits: 2-6-6
ARCH 752	Multidisciplinary Design	3
Prerequisite: Corequisites: ARCH 702C This course ARCH 752, does investigate the care framework, from structure to process to outcome. The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has provided a powerful test of resiliency of our social, public health and governance systems. The future will continue to present compounding challenges for our unprepared and inefficient healthcare systems with natural disasters, an escalating baby-boomer retirement population and a diminishing clinical workforce. This course and its modules utilize design thinking methodologies with a systems and technology approach to enable non-design and design disciplines alike, working together, acquire the expertise and tools for the development of innovative and reliable healthcare ecosystem solutions, products, services, and environments. The skill building approach is considering a growing demand in the workforce of the health spectrum from professional development for health practitioners in addition to opening up new pathways to the health fields with stackable credentials and degree programs. The lab will also introduce principles and practices of collaborative design, across design and health, including clinical providers and designers, and other disciplinary arenas. Experimenting on a co-design mode of crossing disciplinary practices will be built into the ethos of the teaching, with a goal to achieve design solutions, made possible by multiple contributors with diverse disciplinary expertise. In a series of intensive lecture and lab sessions, this workshop will provide readings and resources with additional opportunity to deepen knowledge. An abundance of expert guidance and hands-on material will provide learners with useful context and detail to support interactive discussions. The reading materials will include strategic books, peer review papers, chapters, scientific meeting proceedings. Classroom Hours - Laboratory and/or Studio Hours – Course Credits: 3-1-3
ARCH 755	Environmental Behavior and Design Intelligence	3
This course, ARCH 755, introduces concepts, computation, and tools with capacities to affect environmental qualities. Students will be introduced to a toolbox that can be applied to the measurement of people-based environmental attributes, daylight and artificial light, color, temperature, air quality, flows, and other environmental properties and their processes, as well as a set of skills that simulate environmental behaviors in space. In a series of technical software tutorials, methods are introduced for simulating options in relation to varying criteria and constraining parameters to map out a solution space of possibilities rather than a single optimal solution. Introducing students to environmental qualities and their impact on human well-being, these notions are key concepts to base innovations in the architecture and design of healthcare spaces. In addition to learning simulation software applied to environmental qualities, this course is pedagogically organized to include seminar discussions around particular themes and readings, including nature, environments, atmosphere, and design intelligence, as well as problem-based short design exercises on case studies, worked on in groups of students. Classroom Hours - Laboratory and/or Studio Hours – Course Credits: 3-1-3
ARCH 756	Medical and Mobility Prototypes	3
Designing Therapeutic Interactions, 756 course, focuses on the research, design, and development of interactive environments and products that aid individuals with cognitive or physical disabilities. The course is structured around lectures on disabilities and therapeutic interventions, and hands-on workshops on prototype development using sensors and microcontrollers, computing, and material fabrication methods. Students have opportunities to work closely with health experts and nonprofit organizations to develop a better understanding of specific health conditions and ways they can contribute through design and technology innovation, and user-centered research. The course Is complemented by lectures from professionals in user-centered design, business and innovation, bioengineering, and other fields pertaining to designed therapeutic interventions. By the end of the course students gain a better understanding of how their design skills can be applied towards health and wellbeing solutions with social impact and are also equipped with good basic programming and electronic skills to integrate sensory interaction methods in future design projects. There are no prerequisites for the course. No prior knowledge of electronics or programming is required. Classroom Hours - Laboratory and/or Studio Hours – Course Credits: 2-1-3
		Total: 15 Credits