Health + Wellness Design program celebrates 15 years and looks into the future

LAWRENCE – On February 19 at the Jayhawk Welcome Center on KU’s campus, more than 80 alumni, professional mentors, current master of architecture students, and faculty from the KU Institute of Health + Wellness Design gathered to celebrate 15 years of the Department of Architecture’s Health + Wellness program and plan for the next phase of its development.

The focus of this year’s symposium – the seventh annual event organized by the KU Institute of Health + Wellness Design – was the degree to which advanced digital technologies, especially artificial intelligence (AI), will impact the education and practice of healthcare design.

Phil Bernstein, Associate Dean of Architecture at Yale University, was invited to join the discussions throughout the symposium, provide keynote remarks, and expand on the content of his latest book, Machine Learning: Architecture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. In his keynote address, Bernstein reviewed the rapid development of AI in the last decade and encouraged the audience to not lose sight of the creative and human-centered nature of the design process. Co-hosted by the KU Architecture Lecture Series, the keynote was attended by more than 150 students, educators, and practitioners from the ArcD community. The keynote can be watched here.

During the symposium, Dean Mahbub Rashid honored Frank Zilm, who will be retiring this year, for his many years of service to the school and the entire architecture profession and announced the establishment of the Frank Zilm Award for Excellence in Health + Wellness Design. The annual award will be presented to the top graduate in the Health + Wellness Design professional Master of Architecture program.

The final event of the symposium was the announcement of the winning and honorable mention selections from the student design competition Using Artificial Intelligence to Design Health Spaces. The design competition was created to give students in both the architecture and design departments the chance to explore how AI technologies can be employed to enhance, accelerate, jump-start, or otherwise alter their abilities to design and present ideas for a simple healthcare-focused problem.

Competition prize winners are as follows – First Prize: Arthi Ramanathan. Second Prize (tie): Alexander Lamoureaux; and team that included Anna Dennison, Hunter Locker, and Caleb Peters. Third: Madison Beck. 

Image: 2024 Health + Wellness Design Symposium attendees at Jayhawk Welcome Center.