Designing in the Face of Disaster: Recovery Strategies for Healthcare Facilities
There are few communities in the world who have not experienced the effect of natural disasters. When disasters like this happen, little is often left behind to salvage. Such trauma leaves behind open wounds, and in efforts to heal, developers and other well-meaning urban planners swiftly turn their attention to quickly rebuilding. While this expediency results in the replacement of infrastructure and other civic necessities, the end result is often a foreign place when compared to the one residents previously knew.
We play an indispensable role—as designers, planners, leaders, and advocates—in realizing a more equitable future for these communities. While the need to rebuild presents an obvious opportunity to redraw the physical landscape, this opportunity should be approached with caution. Contextual understanding and careful interventions—driven by community—are key to realizing a place that emerges stronger than it was before—and not merely an empty substitute.
The document embedded below explores some of these concepts, which draw from several threads embedded in our firm: naturally EDR’s own experience rebuilding healthcare facilities following Hurricane Katrina, but also from work developed by our Research Fellows over the past decade, notably in the fields of resilience and community engagement.
What we quickly learned is a resilient community is never achieved via a single design intervention, but from community efforts working in tandem. Simply put, rebuilding functions best when it grows from its roots.