Improve Health and Well-being Through Environmental Design.
We are dedicated to rigorously research relationships between space and people to design and provide built environments to people that could enrich their lives.
Embedded Files
Health Design Lab.
How often do you interact with your surrounding environments? Almost all the time, whether you are indoors or outdoors. Especially during the pandemic, we spent much more time indoors. The space we are occupying has a critical role in our mental and physical health. Carefully designed spaces can reduce stress, promote physical activities, reduce crime rates, prevent infection, and even save lives. Our research focuses on how the design of buildings and cities could improve the health and well-being of individuals. We aim to create healthier communities through design.
We are a design and research lab based at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, KAIST using design to improve the health and well-being of individuals. We work as a multi-disciplinary group closely interacting with healthcare professionals, psychologists, designers as well as experts in other disciplines.
What We Do
Healthy Aging
Age-friendly cities and communities that provide affordable housing options, spatially support all persons, allow changing needs of households, and connect the residents to the broader community can support us to live well and age in place. We are investigating multiple settings, including living environments and public spaces, to identify programmatical and physical design strategies for communities where people of all ages and conditions can age in place.
Safe Communities
Built environments shape how people interact, collaborate, and care for each other. In community and healthcare settings alike, spatial design can promote teamwork, reduce stress, and support shared responsibility for safety and wellbeing. Our research identifies how spatial strategies—such as co-location, visual access, and proximity—enhance teamwork, communication, and social connectedness, even during times requiring physical distancing.
Safe Indoor Environment
From healthcare facilities to shared public interiors, spatial configuration can either mitigate or exacerbate health risks. Our work investigates how airflow, visibility, circulation patterns, and zoning can reduce exposure to infectious diseases and support psychological comfort. By analyzing spatial attributes and their relationship with user behavior, we develop design strategies that improve and enable adaptive responses in times of public health crisis.
Vulnerable Population
Vulnerable populations—such as older adults, individuals with disabilities, or patients—often face spatial barriers that limit their independence and participation. We focus on how the built environment can support or hinder mobility, dignity, and access to care. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, we evaluate spatial affordances for people with diverse physical and cognitive needs.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse