The Architecture of Health
The Architecture of Health examines how developments in healthcare have shaped our built world and reveals how historical examples can provide measures of caution and inspiration.
The Architecture of Health, a MASS publication authored by Michael P. Murphy, Jr. and Jeffrey Mansfield, posits that a historical analysis of hospitals is essential to understanding their current architectural functionality.
Pamela Horn, the director of cross-platform publishing at Cooper Hewitt, writes that this book “charts historical epidemics alongside modern and contemporary architectural transformations in service of medicine, health, and habitation; it explores how infrastructure facilitates healing and architecture’s greater role in constructing our social order.”
“The study of hospital design isn’t ancillary to larger architectural themes but central to the story of architecture itself... Care for others is the ultimate expression of human dignity.”
—Phillip Kennicott on The Architecture of Health, The Washington Post, December 16, 2021
The Architecture of Health, a MASS publication authored by Michael P. Murphy, Jr. and Jeffrey Mansfield, posits that a historical analysis of hospitals is essential to understanding their architectural function in the present. Pamela Horn, the director of cross-platform publishing at Cooper Hewitt writes, this book “charts historical epidemics alongside modern and contemporary architectural transformations in service of medicine, health, and habitation; it explores how infrastructure facilitates healing and architecture’s greater role in constructing our social order.”
The book was published by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and distributed by Artbook | D.A.P. The Architecture of Health complemented the exhibition Design and Healing: Creative Responses to Epidemics, which was on display at the Cooper Hewitt from December 2021-March 2023.
