Health & Wellbeing Design

Resilience Through Wellness

This symposium will focus on the ways architects, designers and health advocates can re-center their focus on disadvantaged communities affected by health disparities.

First, at 2:00 CDT, we'll hear from Dr. Deborah Giesler, executive director at Elmhurst's Synapse House, who will share her experience on engaging, empowering end employing individuals in the Chicago area and suburbs toward a common goal, community.

Then at 3:15 CDT, following a Q&A and brief intermission, we'll hear from a panel of doctors, designers, and affiliated healthcare workers who will discuss the state of our nation's health equity and associated disparities; the role of education and community engagement in collective wellness; links between design, wellness, and developing an effective planning process; and finally, practical means for reinvestment, engagement, and collaboration among spectrum of service providers, developers, designers and communities to make our cities vibrant and diverse places to live, work and play.

Speaker & Panelists

Keynote

Dr. Deborah Giesler, MS, CCC/SLP

Executive Director @ Synapse House

Panelists

Dr. Paola Portela, MD, MHA

Chief Medical Officer @ The Infant Welfare Society of Chicago

Jenny Han, AIA

Director of Design Integration @ The Boldt Company

Dr. Rose Mabwa

Chicago-Region Community Life Director @ The Community Builders

Sheila Cahnman, FAIA, FACHA, LEED AP

President @ JumpGarden Consulting

Abigail Brueggeman, IIDA

Project Manager for Real Estate Project Administration @ Northwestern Medicine

About Think Tank

The basis for Think Tank 2021 comes to us from the theme of the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial, The Available City, curated by David Brown. The Available City began as an inventory of vacant, city-owned lots across Chicago-- currently numbering more than 13,000 sites concentrated on the city’s South and West sides. Over more than a decade of work, Brown developed his research into an ongoing urban design proposal that connects community residents, architects, and designers to work together to create spaces reflecting the needs of local neighborhoods.

The Available City represents a summation of the design process, which our Think Tank team recognized as an appropriate launching-point for the lenses of this year’s topic: disinvestment, disruption, and design. Disinvestment is the recognition of a problem; whether it is an inequality in the status quo, an active intent to harm or disenfranchise, or simply a broken context that requires a fix. Disinvestment represents the problem, whatever it may be. Disruption occurs when a new element is introduced to the context: in this case, the designer. The process of disrupting the status quo is an acknowledgment of a problem; someone has arrived on the scene and has determined that things cannot continue unchecked. In many cases, disruption can be as simple as a conversation that elevates an aggrieved party to the level of equal. Design is the physical manifestation of a solution; after disruption occurs, the new element (the designer) joins with the existing elements (the users) to create a remedy (the design). The design is an attempt to repair, restore, or recreate something that was once disinvested in by others.

Our format for 2021 is simple: from 2:00 - 5:00 PM CST on four autumn Fridays three weeks apart, a different Legat studio will be playing host to a keynote speaker, followed by an intermission and a panel discussion with 3-5 experts (including the keynote speaker).

With Think Tank 2021, our goal is to invite experts in their fields who understand the current market and can highlight our blind spots as designers. We seek to understand where our users feel their needs have been unmet, and what solutions we can provide to them to mend these overlooked gaps. Whether it’s in the growing field of wellness-based design or in an established segment like playful and early childhood learning, we want to understand where the people who live and work in our buildings feel left behind.