Evaluating the design of hospitals within a practice order network

Dennis O'Keeffe, Derek Thomson and Andrew Dainty

Construction Management and Economics, 2015, vol. 33, issue 5-6, 415-427

Abstract: Design evaluation is a complex and rich social practice that is organized and distinguished by its practical understandings, rules, general understandings and teleoaffective structures. This praxiographic study of a major National Health Service (NHS) hospital project uses practice theory to investigate the concept of design evaluation as 'a practice'. By applying Theodore Schatzki's site ontology, design evaluation practices are revealed to respond to dynamic teleoaffective structures that highlight the role of both practical intelligibility and the intertwined impact of external policy stipulations. Through this theoretical lens, fresh insight into the actuality of NHS hospital design evaluation praxis is provided that questions some of the axioms upon which such processes are assumed to operate. In particular, the appropriateness of the decontextualized and deterministic processes currently found in UK government design policy is questioned. It is posited that an approach to design evaluation grounded in Schatzki's practice theory has greater potential to improve the design quality of NHS healthcare buildings that could, in turn, improve patient healthcare outcomes.

Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01446193.2015.1072639 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:conmgt:v:33:y:2015:i:5-6:p:415-427

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RCME20

DOI: 10.1080/01446193.2015.1072639

Access Statistics for this article

Construction Management and Economics is currently edited by Will Hughes

More articles in Construction Management and Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().