wellness

Relationships between architectural design and health care for the under and uninsured are the focus of the Center for Health Systems & Design’s Spring 2012 Architecture-for-Health Lecture Series.

Xuemei Zhu, assistant professor of architecture, co-authored a paper summarizing the research behind active living — a new, comprehensive way of tackling obesity involving the built environment — in the new edition of a journal published by the Institute for Comprehensive Community Development.

The collaboration between design programs at Texas A&M University, top schools in China and at the University of Oklahoma continued during the week of Oct. 10, 2011 during a trip to China by George J. Mann, Texas A&M professor of architecture, and colleagues from OU.

The 13th Annual Texas A&M College of Architecture Research Symposium: Built, Natural Virtual was held Monday, Oct. 24 at the Langford Architecture Center on the Texas A&M campus.

An innovative design for a downtown Austin, Texas senior urban housing facility created by Akshay Sangolli, a Master of Architecture student at Texas A&M, earned a merit award the American Institute of Architect’s New Urban Models For Aging competition.

With a 2011 fellowship from the American Institute of Architects, Amy Kircher, an M.Arch student at Texas A&M, will design a prototype outpatient healthcare facility based on her research that suggests a new direction for preventative care building design and a new way of thinking about healthcare architecture.

Chanam Lee, professor of urban planning at Texas A&M, will tell the American Public Health Association how the built environment can impede the physical activity of children and overweight adults at the group’s annual meeting this fall in Washington, D.C.

Funds raised from the sale of two playhouses designed by Dan Fletcher, who earned a Master of Architecture degree in 2007, will benefit a nonprofit advocacy group in Dallas for abused children in the court system.

Students in a Texas A&M architecture-for-health design studio collaborated with the university's Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture to develop design concepts for Rehab Nova, a new multipurpose health training and agriculture facility to be located in Africa's newest country, South Sudan.

A team from Texas A&M reached the semifinal round of a worldwide competition seeking university students' ideas to solve social and environmental problems. Their idea involved kids trading points they’d earned playing video games for donations to charitable causes.

Ed Tarlton, an urban and regional science Ph.D student at Texas A&M, discussed the connections between housing and health at the Spring 2011 Visionary Scholar Seminar Series sponsored by the university’s Center for the Study of Health Disparities.

For research that has helped improve the lives of children with chronic diseases throughout the world, James Varni, a professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M, has earned The Association of Former Students’ 2011 Distinguished Achievement Award for Research.