Making space for equity

Culture-centred design of hospital waiting rooms 

Hospitals in Aotearoa New Zealand have a legacy founded in colonialism and are designed to Eurocentric principles of health and well-being – as such they are inequitable by design and represent culturally unsafe spaces for many people who need to access them. This includes hospital waiting rooms. Most people going to hospital will head to a waiting room. They function as a holding space (mechanism).  Most are utilitarian, uncomfortable, impersonal and clinical. Our project is premised on understanding how physical spaces in hospitals shape people’s experiences of care. While we are not able to change why people need to attend hospital, we can positively shape their experience of it. 

Integral to a culture-centred design process is epistemic justice. In the context of hospitals, who has a say in the ideas for and creation of hospital waiting room design (and which people are excluded)? What are the power relations and how are they reproduced in and through the design? Which (normative) concepts are used and which ones not?