Advisor: Luiz Fernando Martha
Dissertation: A study on the distance between work in healthcare architecture and its end users
Defense date: 21/02/2020
Abstract
End users of Healthcare Facilities (HF) – patients and their companions – are
often made invisible in healthcare architecture. Thus, there is a distance between
the architect’s work and these users, a distance that increases or decreases according
to the professional’s performance. Through the dialectical method, or Marx’s
method, this research seeks to understand and reconstruct the structure and
dynamics of this distance, analyzing the relationships that compose it. The distance
is, therefore, both the starting point and the object of this study. The components of
the distance, deepened in this research and crossed by the notion of Risk as the
probability of the occurrence of a harmful event, are: (1) the relationship between
architect and contractor; (2) the relationship between Architecture and Healthcare;
(3) the relationship between Architecture and Healthcare Engineering; (4) the
relationship between the architect and the state Sanitary Surveillance; (5) the
relationship between Architecture and maintenance management in HF; and (6) the
relationship between architecture and the concept of humanizing healthcare
environments. These components guided the theoretical reconstruction of the
distance movement through the analysis of interviews with Healthcare Architecture
professionals who work in the private market and in Sanitary Surveillance, as well
as brief considerations about the public consultation that aimed to replace the most
important legislation of this field, the RDC 50/2002 of ANVISA. The result of this
research points out ways for the theoretical deepening and systematization of the
approximation process between work in Healthcare Architecture and the end users
of HF.