The Changemaker Award Recipient

David Allison

The Changemaker Award is given to those who have demonstrated an exceptional ability to make change happen in how healthcare facilities are designed and built, and whose work has had broad impact throughout the industry. David Allison has been a champion for professional education focused on the study of the intersection between health and the built environment that is based on best practices and evidence-based design. Over his 30-year tenure at Clemson University David has served as the major advisor and mentor to numerous students who have gone onto to play significant roles in designing healthcare facilities around the world, many of whom have become leaders in their firms and the profession. He has raised awareness both nationally and internationally with his steadfast vision for healthcare architecture education and research. As an Alumni Distinguished Professor, David has been the Director of Graduate Studies in Architecture + Health [A+H] at Clemson University since 1990. The A+H program at Clemson is nationally recognized for the quality of its focused curriculum and consistent emphasis on design excellence within the discipline of healthcare architecture. Under David’s direction, the program is committed to the integration of innovative design with academic scholarship and research in healthy community planning and design and healthcare environments, and it has won numerous national awards for its work, and the work of its students.

David’s impact lies not only in his work as an educator, but also in the way he effectively bridges education and practice. He is a registered architect with NCARB certification and an ACHA board-certified healthcare architect. His professional qualifications include recognition as a Fellow by the American Institute of Architects, as well as a Fellow and founding member of the American College of Healthcare Architects where he currently serves on the ACHA National Board of Regents. David’s vision for healthcare architecture education and research is strongly rooted in practice and his relentless persistence to maintain the highest standards of quality in his own work and in the work of those he teaches and collaborates.

The Lifetime Achievement
Award Recipient

Clare Cooper Marcus

The Lifetime Achievement Award celebrates the contributions of an individual over their entire career. With more than fifty years-experience, Clare Cooper Marcus is internationally recognized for her pioneering research on the social and psychological implications of design. She is the author of seven books and her work has been recognized with many awards. Clare has been the leading force behind the movement to create therapeutic gardens and landscapes and has been instrumental in putting gardens “on the map” internationally in the design of medical communities as key components of healthcare environments. Her two books on the topic, Healing Gardens (1999, co-authored with Marni Barnes), and Therapeutic Landscapes: An Evidence-based Approach to Designing Healing Gardens and Restorative Outdoor Spaces (2013, co-authored with Naomi Sachs) are the primary resources in the field, and are used by professional designers and students nationally and internationally.

In the mid-90s, with a grant from The Center for Health Design, she and Barnes conducted the first rigorous post-occupancy evaluations of hospital gardens. A few years later Cooper Marcus co-authored/edited Healing Gardens: Therapeutic Benefits and Design Recommendations (with Barnes), thus beginning a passionate interest in the links between nature and healing, and the importance of incorporating gardens into healthcare facilities. This interest continues to the present time with consulting, research, lecturing and the publication, with Naomi Sachs, of Therapeutic Landscapes: An Evidence-based Approach to Designing Healing Gardens and Restorative Outdoor Spaces (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2013), the most comprehensive guide to date on the creation of restorative outdoor spaces in healthcare. After early retirement from the University of California, Berkeley and a bout with a life-threatening illness, she went to live alone on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides where she explored the landscape, reflected on her wartime childhood, read, thought about dreams - and wrote. The result is her most personal book addressing the issue of the patient head on: Iona Dreaming: The Healing Power of Place – A Memoir, a moving account of her experiences with cancer and the importance of place in the recovery process.