Green Healthcare Architecture

Abstract

"Buildings talk," noted California-based healthcare architect Don McKahan at the 2000 annual conference of the Planetree Alliance. If so, what do our hospital buildings have to say about the relationship between the healthcare system and the surrounding community and the environment? Are we conveying the right message? After all, the way in which a hospital is designed and constructed can have significant implications for the environmental impact of healthcare for decades into the future, affecting the health of the environment and the people who live in it, not just locally, but globally.