Gresham Smith’s Lauren Seydewitz, Skip Yauger and Lesa Lorusso to Speak at Annual Environmental Design Research Association Conference
Gresham Smith is proud to announce that Sustainability and Resiliency Program Manager Lauren Seydewitz, Senior Vice President Skip Yauger and Healthcare Research and Insights Director Lesa Lorusso will speak at the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) annual conference in Greenville, South Carolina. On Friday, June 3, Seydewitz and Yauger will speak about examining and mitigating climate threats to hospitals, and Lorusso will share strategies for understanding clients’ design goals through completely virtual interaction.
See below for summaries for each of the presentations.
Preparing for the Inevitable: How Diligent Design Can Mitigate Climate Threats to Hospitals
Presented by Lauren Seydewitz, Sustainability and Resiliency Program Manager at Gresham Smith, and Skip Yauger, Senior Vice President at Gresham Smith.
Natural disasters often disable healthcare facilities at the precise time their services are needed the most, and with a rapidly changing climate that continues to elevate the level of threats and damage from these events, the sonly solution is to design and build for the future. Gresham Smith has developed a climate risk assessment that can assess how a facility will be impacted by 100-, 200-, 500- and 1,000- year storms. This presentation will offer a case study to discuss the components of a climate risk assessment and why facilities should use climate resilient design strategies.
Design Thinking for Healthcare
Presented by Lesa Lorusso, Director of Healthcare Research and Insights at Gresham Smith, and Sheila Bosch, Assistant Professor at the University of Florida.
Designing healthcare environments has always been a challenge, but the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the need to encourage patient and family engagement in healthcare design. The method with which design research teams collect data are changing quickly, requiring an agile approach that still grasps the human-centered and empathetic desires of clients. This presentation will discuss how to structure a design thinking workshop and share lessons learned.