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Text of remarks by Peter L. Bardwell, FAIA, FACHA to the
plenary opening session of the 2008 PDC conference:
Those of you who know me well are familiar with my frequent use of
the phrase “The future isn’t what it used to
be.”
Never was this more true than in contemporary American healthcare,
and its related planning, design, and construction.
For any new moderately large healthcare facility opening its doors
to patients today (March 10, 2008), it’s likely that planning
started about the time that this conference convened five years ago
on March 10, 2003 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Just ponder for a moment what most people likely weren’t
talking a lot about five years ago when today’s new facility
was in its infancy.
Google was still a small, but growing, privately-held company - and
the verb “ to google” hadn’t yet made it into
Webster’s dictionary.
Most of us were carrying cell phones, but we weren’t yet
sitting through meetings --- and presentations --- exercising our
thumbs while text-messaging or “texting” colleagues and
clients.
In March 2003, FaceBook was still a year from being started, and
YouTube was still two years from being started.
Very sadly, what we also didn’t know five years ago is that a
result of this more sedentary
lifestyle has been that a child born on March 10,
2003, has a predicted shorter lifespan than our own, due to the
epidemic of obesity.
Five years ago, we were just beginning to hear about SARS, avian
flu, and the specter of worldwide pandemic. And words such as
“scalability” and “interoperability”
didn’t yet have healthcare-related definitions toward
addressing those looming issues.
In 2003, Tom Friedman hadn’t yet published The World is
Flat, in which he addresses the realities of globalization.
And we hadn’t yet fully witnessed the impact of China's and
India's voracious appetites for oil, steel, and cement. Nor
had we yet fully experienced their strong desire to serve as
extensions of our offices --- providing 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week
CAD and 3D-modeling services at highly competitive prices.
So --- what’s the relevance of all this to us here
today?
Again, the theme of our conference is “The Business of
Sustaining our Future,” one subtitle of which might be:
sustaining our future in the face of unrelenting change that has
reshaped our industry in the mere five years that it took to plan,
design, and construct that new facility opening its doors
today.
The Academy of Architecture for Health strives to address, and in
fact lead, that change, in order to continue and to enhance
its relevance in this ever-changing marketplace.
With nearly 5,000 members, the Academy is one of the AIA’s
most active knowledge communities; now in its seventh decade of
serving as the credible voice and authoritative source on the very
topics that will be addressed here this week.
The value to you as participants is that you will depart on
Thursday on the vanguard of knowledge of what will happen over the
next 5 years --- and importantly, how to apply that knowledge for
the benefit of your firms, your clients, and your
communities.
I’ll conclude by sharing just a few of the additional valuable
resources of the Academy in which you may be interested.
The Academy is proud to have marked the 150th anniversary of the
AIA by publishing a book, entitled The Fourth Factor,
which explores the history of healthcare architecture, and
which honors the contributions that architects make to the health
of our society.
The AIA Academy of Architecture for Health is also particularly
proud to announce the initiation of the National AIA Healthcare
Awards program. There are presently only two annual
AIA/AAH-endorsed healthcare awards programs: the new National AIA
Healthcare Awards and the longstanding Vista Awards (a joint effort
with AHA/ASHE).
We have also established a very successful series of webinars,
focused both on the needs of seasoned practitioners, as well as on
the needs of our young professionals.
And here at the PDC, the Academy is also continuing with forums on
specific ‘issue topics’ that cover a wide range of
healthcare related subjects, from codes to technology.
Once again, the PDC promises to be an energizing and knowledge rich
opportunity. It is my pleasure and honor, on behalf of the Academy
of Architecture for Health, to thank our colleagues at ASHE
for your friendship as we join you in transforming our
healthcare industry.
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