Alessandro Caruso is a UK-based architect committed to creating healing environments for the healthcare industry.
Healthcare design
Alessandro Caruso’s interest in healthcare design stems from a personal experience that gave him a mission: to improve the healthcare environment for patients.
Many years ago, Alessandro had a serious motorcycle accident that left him confined to bed for three months. During that time, he became acutely aware of the challenges of open wards and the clinical atmosphere of the operating theatre. This left him with a deep sense of wanting to do more.
creating healthier and happier experiences to live, work or heal in
“Making a difference in healthcare is so rewarding – you get a real measure of what improves people’s lives,” he says, that is why his designs are based on users’ needs. Alessandro Caruso sees architecture as “lifelong learning” and finds inspiration in his global network of contacts, he warns that progress depends on collaboration. With over 15 years of architectural experience in England, Spain, and his native Italy, his focus is on creating healthier and happier experiences to live, work or heal in.
The Alessandro approach
The son of an architect, Alessandro Caruso has breathed in the dust of building sites all his life, and his love of the discipline continues to this day. His decision to set up ACA+I was motivated by a personal interest. “I wanted to give myself sufficient head space to dedicate to creative research and evidence-based design, which is sometimes hard to do in a commercial setup.”
Caruso’s investigative approach is curiosity-driven, offering a unique perspective on creative healthcare design. Architects, he says, “… are accused of creating designs for our own egos, which is often true. But shouldn’t we sometimes just focus on creating something on a human scale?”
This viewpoint is what separates Alessandro Caruso from his contemporaries. He views the building from the inside out, believing that the form should follow the function, while stimulating the senses. For him, it’s only possible to create a healing environment if there’s a focus on what immediately surrounds the people: the interiors.
Read the full interview in the new digital ECO Magazine Healthcare Edition (completely free)
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