Publications

Research indicates that adaptation influences how people experience indoor conditions (ICs), and that the built environment influences both adaptation, via perceived control, and well-being. Their interlinkage is, however, not well understood. Therefore, we investigated how the design of hospital rooms can contribute to patients’ well-being by supporting their adaptation of and to ICs via perceived control. Two mixed methods case studies were ...

Children affected by cancer often require repeated hospitalisations. As visits may extend over several months, the hospital becomes part of these children's and their families' everyday lives. Since the turn of the 21st century the impact of the material hospital environment on children's health and well-being receives heightened attention from researchers across various disciplines. The context of childhood cancer amplifies young people's ...

During the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic, crisis management and fast decision-making regarding infrastructural adaptations were key as hospitals faced major challenges while attempting to ensure optimal care. This study aims to gain insight into decision-making processes regarding infrastructural adaptations. Interviews were conducted (in July 2020) with representatives of technical services, facilities and planning departments in six ...

Social and demographic changes in the 21st century turn an inclusiveapproach to built heritage into a necessity. Awareness is growing that human abilities and conditions are diverse, across both people and the lifespan, while disability is increasingly understood as resulting from interaction with the designed environment. Acknowledging the challenges involved in reconnecting modern heritage with this contemporary reality, this paper focuses on ...

Architects tend to design consistent with their own values and concerns. Designing for imaginary users, especially disabled ones, may pose major challenges. Drawing on aspects of focused ethnography, we show how architect Stéphane Beel’s anticipation of using a wheelchair in the future due to a progressive-regressive disease influences his willingness and ability to empathise with, and design for, wheelchair-users. We study a museum building in ...

The biomedical model states that autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder, called autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In this article, Joyce Leysen, Delphine Jacobs, and Stefan Ramaekers argue that this is a narrow way of looking at autism and, further, that the biomedical view has implications for our understanding of parenthood and circumscribes the pedagogical agency of parents of children diagnosed with ASD. The authors adopt a critical stance ...

Door de Covid-19-pandemie zoeken we naar nieuwe manieren van samenzijn. We herorganiseren onze ruimtes om tegelijk verbonden te zijn en toch afstand te houden. Onderzoek in diverse zorgomgevingen maakt duidelijk dat de nood aan een evenwicht tussen nabijheid en afzondering niet uniek is voor deze pandemie, en dat er diverse mogelijkheden zijn om dit ruimtelijk te organiseren.