First Design Lecture of the Fall ’24 Academic Year

When Hospitality Is Not Taken for Granted: Designing for Psychiatric Hospitals

How come most designers work on services and places where people are well-off and wealthy? Why have environments that require careful, inclusive design for vulnerable people, such as hospitals and social services, drawn so little interest from the design community until now?

This talk intends to unveil a design aporia: we neglect a majority of vulnerable users who are, ironically, extremely sensitive to the design of environments and services. In fact, design plays a key role in these environments, as it can dramatically improve relationships and enhance people’s sense of dignity and self-esteem. Furthermore, designing for vulnerable users requires much attention to overcoming stereotypes, as Victor Papanek introduced in Design for the Real World. An ethnographic and co-design approach, combined with a thorough focus on the design process itself, will help achieve sustainable design projects.

This talk will draw on Marie Coirié’s 15 years of experience designing for general and psychiatric hospitals, public services, and training future designers and managers. A few well-chosen examples will help you understand the importance of design for vulnerable groups and how co-design can make a difference in overcoming people’s difficulties while bringing value to the entire design process.

Marie Coirié is a designer, specialized in systemic and social design, and graduated from ENSCi-Les Ateliers in 2010. She co-founded the lab-ah at GHU Paris Psychiatry and Neurosciences, a public hospital group. Lab-ah is known as the first embedded research design team within a French hospital. She currently works on furthering developments in hospitality to improve relationships and social cohesion in public services. @marie_coirie