Preventive Building Medicine

We recently interviewed Adele Houghton and Carlos Castillo-Salgado about their new book Architectural Epidemiology (interview coming out around September 25th) which advocates for designing buildings not just for green and healthy building standards like LEED, but for addressing the local context of social and architectural determinants of health through the building construction process.

One of the things they brought up that I don’t think gets much attention are vector born illnesses. Zika, West Nile, Malaria, Dengue Fever are known more than they used to be, but as the climate changes the mosquitos known to spread these diseases move to new habitats and are being traced diligently by professionals.  This isn’t just a climate issue, but a public health issue that is now a building design issue.

After living in mosquito rich Houston, I never expected to be worried about them in San Francisco. But every time it’s hot outside and we need to open the windows, I worry about them getting in the house.  Even more so after my daughter suffered a bite that lingered on her face for several months. We don’t like “mogidos” around here.

But from a design perspective there are a few overlapping considerations that architects and planners can have regarding mosquitos that can be brought up during any design process. If you live in a place where fresh air is necessary through open windows, make sure to design screens in. We made sure to have the windows come with screens when we put in new ones, something that most San Francisco houses don’t have. This is of course a really small and easy fix, treating an infection later on is much more complicated.

If we think about these types of impacts to health early on in the planning and design process of infrastructure or housing projects, we can start to build neighborhoods and homes that address the issues that arise from our built and natural environments. It’s also much cheaper to do it earlier on than later.

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