Taking place on 1 March 2024 at the Academy of Arts in Berlin, Germany, the biennial symposium was founded in 2006 by Prof. Christine Nickl-Weller. Organised by the European Network Architecture for Health (ENAH), it provides a creative platform for discussions on current developments in healthcare and their impact on the planning and design of healthcare facilities in the context of health-promoting architecture and urban planning.

This year’s event is titled ‘Health & [E]quality – Building Better Health Care Landscapes’, and it will focus on the challenges of fair and humane healthcare structures in Germany and neighbouring European countries, with contributions from internationally renowned speakers. The core question running through the symposium will be how innovative and future-oriented hospital structures can be created in the face of current disruptions, including the planned reorganisation of the hospital landscape in Germany; the increasing shortage of clinical staff; climate change; and rapidly advancing digitalisation. 

In addition to his role as European Healthcare Design programme director, which he took on last year, Sunand Prasad is a principal, health at Perkins & Will, London, and chair of the UK Green Building Council. For the session on sustainable development, he will be joined by Matthew Tulley, redevelopment director at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, to offer insights into the zero-carbon and climate-resilience strategy of the NHS.

With climate resilience and climate neutrality in the healthcare sector established as clear goals by both the German government and the EU, the session will also explore how these ambitions can be achieved without causing hospitals financial distress, and what structures and regulations need to be put in place.

Other session panellists include Wilfried von Eiff, academic director of the Center for Health Management and Regulation at HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, and head of the Center for Hospital Management, University of Muenster; and Frank Dzukowski, head of the Management Unit for Sustainability and Climate Management at UKE Hamburg, and managing director of the technical UKE-Dienstleistungs.

For more information and details on registration, visit the event website.