The following are the themes for this edition:

1. Healing Landscapes
2. Design of Healthcare Environments on Health outcomes
3. Healthcare and Fashion
4. Social aspects in lighting design in urbanism
5. Sustainable living and wellbeing

The detail write up of the themes are mentioned below

1. Healing Landscapes:
As quoted by Henry David Thorean “Nature is but another name for health” healing Landscapes are design environment consisting of plants, hard landscaping and other garden elements and features designed with the purpose of stimulating the senses. According to studies, this stimulation occurs because of plants and the use of materials that engage one’s senses of sight, smell, touch, taste, and sound. These types of gardens are beneficial to all kinds of users like patients, staff and visitors, especially those who have sensory processing issues, including autism, and other disabilities. Healing landscapes promote active healing of physical as well as mental health. The garden setting is specifically designed to be used by therapy professionals such as physiotherapists, psychologists, occupational therapists, diversional therapists, and nurses as a tool for specific courses of therapy. Individuals are healed by actively participating in outdoor activities such as walking, exercising, playing etc. It is a recognized form of therapy and uses garden related activities to heal, social, cognitive, physical and psychological issues as well as enhance general health and wellbeing. People who have sensory processing disorders tend to have extreme reactions to sensory stimulation in that they are either stimulated too much or too little. As a result, the individual will often have developmental issues. A healing garden can be very therapeutic for people who suffer from sensory problems. It may be used as a calming place and as a gentle way to stimulate the senses. This type of environment can become a place where people with sensory processing disorders feel safe and comfortable in exploring their senses without feeling overwhelmed by them.

2. Influence of Design of Healthcare Environments on Health outcomes:
Health outcomes have been a central concern in evaluations of quality of life. Researchers (Street, Makoul, Arora, & Epstein, 2009) across different disciplines have recognized many elements such as individual’s initiatives and lifestyles, social interactions in clinical and social care, quality of health and care services, physical environment, built environment etc. to be associated with health outcomes. Among them, built environment is primarily considered as a foundation for health and wellness. However, it is a challenge to identify the role and proportion of contribution of the factors and design of built environment attributed to health outcomes. One of the themes of this multidisciplinary conference is to explore and discuss the influence of the design of built environment of health care buildings on health outcomes of the users. Hospital, a healthcare building, is a strange & alien environment, which holds people of various backgrounds suffering from a common misfortune of ill health The atmosphere in the hospital settings can be intimidating, unfamiliar and often confusing which can be overcome by design, which positively influences psychological states of the patients. Fiona De Vos (2002) indicated that certain symptoms, such as increased stress, anxiety and pain experienced by patients are not necessarily part of their illness, but rather, caused by a misfit between the hospital environment and the physical, social and psychological needs of the patients. Thus the concerned professionals such as healthcare providers, architects, Designers, psychologists etc. and hospital administrators among others will discuss on this platform about healthcare built environment influencing health of the patients, families and staff.

3. Healthcare and Fashion
The interdisciplinary endeavor in research has imparted superpower to textile materials, which lead to the advent of Medical textile products. As opined by Renbourn it is a link between the technical and biological sciences and the social humanities. As the society is giving more priority to health care and recognized the need to follow healthy lifestyle, there is increased demand for specialized products. The increased awareness of the need to enhance the quality of life of people has significantly contributed to the high consumption and sustained growth of medical textiles over the past decade - S.C. Anand, Dr. M. Miraftab, Dr. S. Rajendran, Prof J.F. Kennedy. Industrial regulators have become a powerful force in the medical textile industry through their roles in establishing product standards, granting licenses, implementing environmental and safety rules, monitoring quality systems, and regulating many other critical issues related to the statutory requirements on maintaining the safety and performance of medical textile products - Yimin Qin. The wide range of medical textile products can be related to hygiene, curing injuries, preventing diseases and for supporting health and personal life. This session intends to bring forth the experts to share their research and thoughts on the significance of designing user centered health care products, special materials and finishes for medical textile products, wearable and smart textiles for monitoring patient’s health, and the standards and guidelines for the evaluation and disposal of medical textile products.

Sub –themes:
1. Smart textiles for health care
2. Wearable healthcare system
3. User centered health care product design
4. Design for special populations
5. Novel finishes for medical textile products
6. Textile Materials for health care products
7. Medical textile products
8. Evaluation of Health care products

4. Social aspects in lighting design in urbanism
All lighting is ‘social lighting’: it participates in staging social life and social space. To light a street one way rather than another is to shape the way it feels and the way it works for all the very different people who interact with it. Lighting professionals – which includes not only lighting designers but all lighting-related professionals such as planners, architects, engineers – are therefore in the business of making social places and intervening in social lives. Of course, their lighting strategies need to work technically and aesthetically – but they also need to work socially, to improve the quality of people’s lives and interactions, and to avoid negative impacts. This provides the starting point for the social research in design approach in order to make lighting work socially, professionals need to value the social aspects of lighting as seriously as they do the technical and aesthetic aspects of light, integrating social thinking, understanding and research into their work. Developing a fuller social understanding of a space and its complexity, moreover, can produce more creative, innovative and sustainable design strategies.

5. Sustainable living and well being
We know urban centers of many countries are growing rapidly, especially developing countries. Also there have been predictions of population growth that would make 70% of world’s population residing in cities by 2050. With fast growing population, pressure to meet food production demands is exerted on our existing resources. Resulting in ‘food security’ and ‘human health or well-being’ becoming an interesting topic; especially for urban nodes, as such areas do not always engage in primary occupation. Urbanized areas import or gets food products transported from distant towns or villages that practice agriculture. The transportation from peri-urban /distant villages consumes time and energy; also to meet required demands farmers make use of chemical methods of mass food production. Therefore, the cities (metro-politan to smaller rapid growing cities) lack access to fresh and nutritional food products. Most of the urban cities now face air and water pollution; and toxicity of other resources, especially in developing nations. With government policies and social demands of aiming sustainable methods of living, food production too is to be seen with the perspective of sustainability / healthier way of living and how it can impact human health and well-being. The studies expected are to be in relation with healthy and sustainable methods of living for urban/rural areas. And how these methods can impact human well-being.

It is our pleasure to inform you that we are inviting full papers for the conference and the last date for sending the same is February 15th 2020. We would be happy to receive your interest in the form of papers and share in person your expertise and experiences through this platform. Your abstracts and full paper can be sent to shaaped.foa@manipal.edu. For any further queries kindly revert back to the mail mentioned above.