Lifestyled Health and Places

The built environment and public health have a close history of association: from the earliest considerations by Hippocrates of the role of place for human health to the influence of the hygiene movement on architecture, landscape and urban planning. Today global developments such as chronic (or lifestyle) diseases, aging populations and a heavily burdened environment have lent a new urgency to the question of the influence of architecture and urban planning on lifestyles and health. 'Life-Styled', created as part of the Health and Places Initiative at Harvard University, shows by means of detailed graphics how public health issues can be incorporated into the planning of the built environment and how lifestyles can be shaped accordingly. Taking greater account of health aspects when designing (public) space represents not simply an obligation, but also a means to rethink the disciplines of architecture and design.