Human health is both simple and complex. While intrinsically connected to nature, it is continually shaped by the environments we inhabit. Environmental influences on health are well established in areas such as air quality, access to daylight, temperature, cleanliness and safety.

Less understood is how our environments make us feel. The emotional and psychological impacts of space remain under-researched, highlighting an enduring tension between art and science. Are there universal environmental qualities that influence wellbeing? Which spatial conditions contribute to stress, and which promote calm, restoration and connection?

As built environments have evolved alongside advances in technology, so too have the drivers of design. At the intersection of design and research lies an opportunity to bring greater rigour to understanding how the built environment supports mental and emotional health. Our cave-dwelling ancestors instinctively sought shelter, warmth and safety. As designers, researchers and practitioners, what is our contribution to preserving and advancing human health within the modern-day cave?

Metro South Hospital and Health Service has run three major projects concurrently, providing an opportunity to observe design outcomes and consider how project requirements intersect with diversity and inclusion goals. Building standards led these projects to focus heavily on mobility disabilities, particularly for patients and visitors. To encourage more inclusive design, Metro South established an accessibility guidance group, which created MSH Guidance Note 16: Design Requirements, Accessibility. Through collaborative development of this guidance note, the group identified practical modifications to better support the diverse community, with key focus areas including high sensory environments, fixture and fitting constraints, and lighting. The guidance group comprises a wide range of subject matter experts, including staff and consumers with lived and living experience of disability, alongside clinical experts and members of the Service Expansion team.

The Cairns Hospital Campus Master Plan challenges the idea of what a hospital is, turning healthcare inside out into a connected civic, clinical and innovation ecosystem. As the primary referral centre for Tropical North Queensland, Cairns is moving beyond an acute facility to become a tertiary health campus within a dynamic precinct of education, research and industry. Rather than adding buildings, the plan redefines the campus as a living system, integrating clinical care with research, learning and biotechnology, and forging connections to the city and James Cook University. It creates a platform for innovation, collaboration and discovery, where healthcare becomes a driver of regional growth. Grounded in climate-responsive tropical design and recognising First Nations connections to Country, the plan embeds resilience at every scale, positioning Cairns as a leading model for regional health infrastructure.

If prevention is a priority for Queensland, the built environment must be understood as part of the health system. Drawing on the Healthy Places, Healthy People work led by Queensland Health and the Office of the Queensland Government Architect, this presentation shows how urban design, planning and infrastructure investment can support physical activity, social connection, mental wellbeing and long-term resilience.

Rather than treating design quality as an aesthetic extra, the session positions it as preventative health infrastructure. Queensland evidence shows that better access to services, active transport networks and green corridors is associated with higher levels of walking and physical activity.

Local case studies, including the Active School Travel program, Oxley Creek Transformation and regional main-street renewal, show how research and cross-agency partnerships translate into healthier places. Design decisions, the presentation argues, must be treated as health decisions.

This panel brings together redevelopment leads who have navigated the full project lifecycle, from planning through to commissioning. Drawing on direct experience, they share candid insights on what worked, what did not, and the lessons learnt along the way.

Our panel will explore:

• How do you maintain a project's original vision and community engagement through years of delivery?
• What practical trade-offs arise when balancing resilience, flexibility and cost?
• How can early design decisions better anticipate the realities of commissioning?

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease. This presentation shows how healthcare design influenced by belonging, connection and supportive environments can make a difference, building on the proposition that healthcare should occur in a physical space that enhances a person's desire to improve themselves. The session shares a practical and collaborative approach for translating clinical requirements into environments that feel unique, respectful and safe.

Through the case study of Wentworth Health Service, collaboration led to strong art and design elements reflecting local identity, helping the community regain faith in the healthcare system. By listening to community experiences and working as a collective team with aligned goals, the key takeaway is a set of belonging checks to test whether design decisions improve user experience and contribute to a holistic healthcare system.

The Institute for Urban Indigenous Health (IUIH) is a not-for-profit Community-Controlled Health Service leading the planning and delivery of health and family wellbeing services for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population of South East Queensland.

Drawing on IUIH's work across the region, this presentation explores how health infrastructure can support self-determination, cultural continuity and improved outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

A key case study is the Dakabin Wellness Precinct: a state-of-the-art primary healthcare campus that places wellness at the centre of community and establishes a new cultural hub. The campus is planned around a landscaped, pedestrianised elliptical courtyard, prioritising the repair of Country and creating culturally safe spaces for care, gathering and everyday life.

The presentation outlines practical strategies for embedding community-controlled health into design processes and how these principles translate into built form.

As healthcare models evolve rapidly, health infrastructure faces growing pressure to keep pace with changing clinical, operational and community needs. This presentation explores how lean, scalable and evidence-informed infrastructure can support more flexible models of care through standardising inpatient unit (IPU) design across NSW Health Infrastructure capital projects.

It offers a firsthand look at the development of the NSW Health Infrastructure IPU Standard Design, created through extensive evidence-informed design, stakeholder consultation and multidisciplinary collaboration between Health Infrastructure, clinicians, planners, operational teams and architects.

This approach also reduces clinician engagement time during design and streamlines planning and delivery, directing specialist input to areas of greatest strategic and clinical value.

The initiative examines how standardised IPU layouts, ward composition and common components can:

The healthcare development cycle is well known: a capital budget is released, a design team engaged, and the pressure is immediate to deliver the brief, nothing less, rarely more, on time and on budget. The result is buildings that face inward, consuming their surroundings rather than activating them, solving today's problem but deferring the opportunity to be something greater.

This presentation offers insight into the decision-making framework and design methodology that has enabled the Liverpool Health and Academic Precinct, one of the most complex health infrastructure projects in NSW, to position itself as more than another hospital redevelopment. Instead, it functions as generative infrastructure, enabling future development, seeding an innovation precinct and redefining what healthcare environments owe to the public realm.

Attendees will leave with an understanding of how strategic leadership, a values-led brief and sustained stakeholder engagement can transform a single building commission into a precinct vision that genuinely transforms a campus and a town centre.

This panel session explores the evolving role of health planning in shaping healthcare systems beyond the traditional hospital campus. As models of care shift toward prevention, community-based services, virtual care and integrated networks, infrastructure planning must also evolve.

The panel will examine how legacy hospital models can unintentionally constrain modern care, highlighting the importance of designing flexible, adaptable and future-focused systems that respond to changing demographics, workforce pressures, technology and consumer expectations. The discussion centres on:

• Planning services, operational models, patient flows and integrated care pathways across the wider health ecosystem
• The value health planners bring to strategic decision-making, service planning and infrastructure investment
• How health planning supports broader system transformation, aligning infrastructure, operations and clinical strategy for sustainable healthcare delivery

Recovery after stroke takes considerable time, with significant physical, sensory, psychological and cognitive impairments changing survivors' perception, understanding, communication, movement and interactions with the world. Rehabilitation also requires the active engagement of stroke survivors, their families and carers to achieve improved outcomes. Inpatient rehabilitation settings must therefore address dwelling, choice, dignity and autonomy differently to acute hospital environments.

This presentation addresses how connection to outdoors and nature can support holistic health and wellbeing for stroke survivors undertaking rehabilitation, through access to active therapeutic challenges, social settings and valued, restorative environments. It introduces the InFoLIA framework, a practical, evidence-based framework for healthcare providers, planners and designers to guide health-promoting nature-based design in stroke rehabilitation settings. The co-design process used to develop this framework over a three-year transdisciplinary design inquiry will also be outlined.

Designing hospitals that are resilient, adaptable and meaningful demands more than good intentions. It requires visionary briefs, deeply engaged stakeholders and procurement methodologies that either enable or constrain design ambition.

This session compares two emerging hospitals, Bankstown and Melton, to unpack how different procurement models shape the journey from vision to built reality. It explores how Managing Contractor and PPP approaches influence stakeholder engagement, design flexibility, risk, whole-of-life value and the capacity to respond to future models of care.

Acknowledging that several architecture practices have contributed to masterplanning and design on both projects, the presentation will clearly articulate roles, interfaces and collaborative processes to ensure appropriate attribution and transparency. With two principals presenting, the session allows space for debate and foregrounds lessons that can inform more equitable, trusted and enduring healthcare environments.