Research Activities
With experience spanning institutions such as TU Delft in the Netherlands, Chalmers University in Sweden, and currently at Inholland University of Applied Sciences, I have been involved in a diverse array of research projects. My roles have ranged from assistant to co-author to lead researcher, reflecting my versatility and expertise. This section provides an overview of my academic and applied research activities, primarily centered on building design for health promotion in living, health, care, and cure environments. This overview does not include research in which I support bachelor’s or master’s students unless it is part of a larger research project.
Research Subjects
- Human Health: Health, wellbeing, health promotion, positive health, healthy behavior, equity, empowerment, social sustainability
- Building Design Processes: co-design, design briefs, methods, design education, design decision-making
- Settings: Hospitals and healthcare, universities, workplaces, residential, neighborhoods
- Transformation: Cultural, indutrial heritage, energy-saving retrofit, combining with organisational tranformation
- Methods: Literature reviews, interviews, observations, surveys, document analysis, and plan analysis,
Current Research Projects
Project Goals: To explore future concepts for residential care organizations and buildings, using Berensteinlaan in The Hague as a case study.
Affiliation: Inholland University of Applied Sciences
Collaborators:
- Femke Feenstra (G.A.F. Architects) (project lead)
- Tess Maas (G.A.F. Architects)
- Rosemarijn Peters (G.A.F. Architects)
- Froukje van de Klundert (Posad Maxwan)
- Hanneke Noordam (Vilans)
- Clementine Mol (Cordaan)
- Laura Koenen (Studio Laura Koenen)
Methods Used: Participatory Design Action Research, including interviews with residents, the local community, municipal representatives, housing corporations, and care organizations; dialog sessions; building and urban analysis; and co-design dialogs supported by concept visualizations.
Your Role: Researcher, ensuring the reliability and transparency of methods, and clearly distinguishing between aims, known facts, and hypotheses.
Expected Outcomes: Presentation, short publication, organizational and design concepts, co-design tools, and a methodology.
Further Reading: Awaiting project completion.
Project Title: Healthy Inclusive Alkmaar Through Design (HIATD)
- Affiliation: Inholland University of Applied Sciences
- Collaborators:
- Huub Purmer (Inholland)
- Gemeente Alkmaar
- Project Goals: To explore forms knowledge gaps, forms of collaboration, and example projects to develop housing and care ambitions for the municipality of Alkmaar.
- Methods Used: Participatory Design Action Research, including interviews with residents, the local community, municipal representatives, housing corporations, and care organizations; dialog sessions; building and urban analysis; and co-design dialogs supported by concept visualizations.
- Your Role: Researcher, ensuring the reliability and transparency of methods, and clearly distinguishing between aims, known facts, and hypotheses.
- Expected/Actual Outcomes: Presentation, short publication, organizational and design concepts, co-design tools, and a methodology.
- Further Reading: Awaiting project completion.
Project goal: As a lecturer-researcher at Inholland University of Applied Sciences, we aim to bridge the gap between education, research and practice, enriching both domains through mutual interaction. However, the practical implementation of this role varies widely and is not yet fully understood. To address this gap, our research aims to classify different types of lecturer-researchers and explore how they effectively integrate these dual responsibilities.
Affiliation: Inholland University of Applied Sciences
Collaborators:
- Jeanine Failé – project lead (Inholland University of Applied Sciences)
Methods Used: Survey and follow-up interviews with lecturer-researchers, interviews with HR department and thematic content analysis of job vacancies of lecturer-researchers.
Your Role: Researcher, discussion partner for the lead researcher.
Expected Outcomes: Presentation, conference poster, and a book chapter.
Further Reading: Awaiting project completion.
Past Research Projects
Initially as independent researcher at HealthScapes, and now as part of my work at Inholland University of Applied Science
Purpose; (1) a review mapping literature addressing age-in-place i.r.t. social sustainability, living environment (place and space) and healthy older adults.
Collaboration: Susanna Nordin (Darlana Univeristy), Jodi Sturge (Twente University, HealthScapes), and Marie Elf (Darlana University)
My role: supporting main reserachers (Susanna and Jodi) in all the reserach steps from reserach strategy, paper selection and analysis up to writing and editing.
Outcome: paper expected 2023-2024
as PostDoc at: Architecture & Civil Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology
Purpose: The literature review focused on research on the relation built environment, health-related outcomes and the healthcare environment.
Collaboration: This is a collaboration with Dalarna University Sweden and Florey Institute Melbourne Australia.
Outcomes: Publications expected 2023.
Purpose; This review maps literature addressing a combination of homeowner decision-making, renovation of residential buildings with regards to both energy reduction /performance and architectural heritage.
Collaboration: Paula Femenias of Chalmers University of Technolog (Building Design) and Mattias Legnér from Uppsala University (Department of Art History)
My role: support on review method; developing search terms, strategies, data extraction for data bases; title and abstract filter.
Outcome: paper expected 2022
as PostDoc at Architecture & Civil Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology
Background: Previous research indicates that the physical environment of healthcare facilities plays an important role in the health, well-being, and recovery outcomes of patients. However, prior works on mental healthcare facilities have incorporated physical environment effects from general healthcare settings and patient groups, which cannot be readily transferred to mental healthcare settings or its patients. There appears to be a specific need for evidence synthesis of physical environmental effects in mental healthcare settings by psychopathology.
Purpose: This review evaluates the state (in terms of extent, nature and quality) of the current empirical evidence of physical environmental on mental health, well-being, and recovery outcomes in mental healthcare inpatients by psychopathology.
Collaboration: This was a collaboration with Institute of Facility Management, Life Sciences and Facility Management, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Zurich, Switzerland & Environmental Psychology Department, School of Psychology, University of Surrey, United Kingdom.
Outcome: [Journal paper] Weber, C., Flores, V. M., Wheele, T. P., Miedema, E., & White, E. V. (2022). Patients ’ Health & Well-Being in Inpatient Mental Health-Care Facilities : A Systematic Review. Frontiers in Psychology, 12 (January), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.758039
as PostDoc at Architecture & Civil Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology
Background: Demographic changes will lead to a globally aging population, a growing number of single households and increasing urbanisation and migration. Population projections suggest there will be 66.1 million people aged 80 years plus in the EU-28 by 2080, and less than two persons of working-age for each elderly person, an enormous threat for healthcare and welfare. Widespread and interconnected challenges make hospitals an important target to focus on for addressing societal health and wellbeing and social equality on the one, and energy conservation and climate mitigation on the other hand. This is particularly important now, as many of the healthcare buildings in most parts of Europe are in urgent need of redesign, which requires further research and cross-collaboration within the healthcare sector, society and other disciplines such as building technology and design.
Purpose: In 2019, the involved researchers started to work on understanding factors for health and well-being promotion in hospitals by applying the SSO method that has been developed at Chalmers for designing sustainable offices with a focus on good indoor environmental quality (IEQ), well-being and comfort at workplaces. The purpose of the (Re)designing hospitals project is to lay the ground for further research on (i) sustainable development of healthcare environment as well as (ii) the introduction of health promotive organisations.
Collaborations: The collaboration has been established between RWTH Aachen in Germany, one of the best universities in engineering sciences in Europe, and MHH, one of the six leading university hospitals in Germany and the Chalmers spinoff company Furbish with researchers from two different divisions at ACE (see above). As a next step, we do see the need to involve other stakeholders in the Västra Gothenburg Region (VGR) and Gothenburg University, working with healthcare questions as well.
Outcome: conference paper expected 2024
as PostDoc at Architecture & Civil Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology
Background: This project is the PhD project of Melina Forooraghi. This abstract is from her Licentiate thesis published in 2020. This was originally published here: https://research.chalmers.se/en/publication/517174).
Her work is still ongoing; and current publications can be found here: https://research.chalmers.se/en/person/melinaf
Abstract: The office, where many people spend most of their day, influences the health of employees, their families, communities, and society. While the body of research that relates office environment to health is growing, a question of interest for practitioners arises: how buildings should be designed and managed in order to support and promote health. This Licentiate thesis adopts a Salutogenic perspective in physical office environments. The Salutogenic approach is an orientation toward health that focuses on the origins of health rather than on the determinants of disease. Salutogenesis indicates that the factors that create health are often different from those that cause illness. In this perspective, ‘sense of coherence’ has been found to be a resource for health promotion. However, the previous research concerning health in offices has tended to focus on the negative impacts of physical office environments (pathogenic) and less research has been carried out on the components that create and maintain health (Salutogenic).
My role in this project: I have been involved in this project first a co-author, then also a co-supervisor.
as PostDoc at Architecture & Civil Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology
Background: In relation to the current COVID-19 Pandemic we are studying the remote-workplaces of employees of Chalmers University Of Technology. We mainly explore the relation between the home work conditions (e.g. social density, household constellation, unpaid activities), work activities (e.g. lab work, desk work, teaching), health behaviours (e.g. taking regular breaks for water, social interaction) and health (e.g. productivity, perceived physical health, perceived mental health). We hope to identify the factors that complicate remote work and identify vulnerable employee populations to be able to inform organisastional strategies.
My role in the project has been to co-develop the aim and research question of the study. I have also designed and developed the survey questions, the survey format to collect the data. I have extracted the data and provided preliminary results.
Outcomes: awaiting funding for result publication
as PhD student at Architecture & Civil Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology
Background: The AIDAH research and innovation environment intends to unfold intra-, inter- and transdisciplinary research supporting implementation projects for a sustainable built environment that confront three major societal challenges:(1) Increasing diversified articulated demands on the housing market call for alterability and adaptability in solutions for new resilient ways of residing. (2) An ageing society requires new residential ways of living that combine dignity and appropriate care enabling individuals to remain independent in residence as long as possible but that also provide sound working environments for personnel. (3) Profound changes in technical conditions for caring and medical treatment necessitate rethinking traditional healthcare situations and developing new situations ranging from advanced care in residence to intensive care units in hospital and patient hotels. The intended scientific integration in conceptual and methodological terms—between architecture humanities research, sociology of residence and caring sciences—is intended to bridge gaps and initiate transgressive academic approaches exploring new modes of knowledge production. Objectives of these approaches include identifying and articulating new resilient qualities in designs, in caring processes and healing environments, thereby providing new operational knowledge developed in close collaboration with diverse actors and stakeholders in society. International research exchange will provide further valid strategic evidence-based design support for decision makers in planning, building and medical services. The interdisciplinary team of researchers from architectural design, social and caring sciences are based at the Centre for Healthcare Architecture, CVA, the recently established Centre for Residential Architecture, CBA and the CIB W069 Commission Residential Studies, all hosted by Chalmers with active team participation also in EU COST Action Intrepid.
Health Promotive Building Design: My role has been to focus on the design of healthcare buildings in relation to ongoing healthcare developments, namely the introduction of health promotion.
Partner organizations
- Dalarna university (Academic, Sweden)
- University of Gothenburg (Academic, Sweden)
- University of Gothenburg (Publisher, Sweden)
Start date 12/11/2013 – End date The project is closed: 31/12/2019
Find more information, such as collaborating researchers here.
As research assistant at Architecture at Technical. University Delft
Which design principles have laid the foundations for what the built environment around us looks like?
To support the Bachelors of Architecture at TU Delft, we developed a systematic overview of, and insight in, the history of architecture, urban and landscape design. Each component focused on 40 projects that together visualise central design principles (e.g. Grondslagen). The focus has been on;
- The home, its garden and landscape;
- public space and buildings;
- residing, building and surroundings;
- the European Metropool.
My work has focused on collecting building material, such as historical drawings and photos, to support the development of drawings of the project. Additionally I was responsible for developing the drawings of 20 housing project, that should have a common visual style to allow comparison and plan analysis.
The developed material is currently used in the courses with the same name; Grondslagen 1, 2, 3 and 4.
Publications
2024
- [Journal paper] Elf, M., Lipson-Smith, R., Kylén, M., Saa, J. P., Sturge, J., Miedema, E., … & Anåker, A. (2024). A Systematic Review of Research Gaps in the Built Environment of Inpatient Healthcare Settings. HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal doi.org/10.1177/19375867241251830
2023
- [Journal paper] Forooraghi, M., Miedema, E., Ryd, N., Wallbaum, H., & Babapour Chafi, M. (2023). Relationship between the design characteristics of activity-based flexible offices and users’ perceptions of privacy and social interactions. Building Research & Information, 1-17.
https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2023.2180343 - Sturge, J., Miedema, E., Elf, M., & Nordin, S. (2023). Socially sustainable housing and built environments to support the health and social inclusion of older adults: protocol for a scoping review and stakeholder consultation. BMJ open, 13(12), e075447.
2022
- [Journal paper] Weber, C., Flores, V. M., Wheele, T. P., Miedema, E., & White, E. V. (2022). Patients ’ Health & Well-Being in Inpatient Mental Health-Care Facilities : A Systematic Review. Frontiers in Psychology, 12 (January), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.758039
- [Journal paper] Miedema, E., Lindahl, G., & Elf, M. (2022) The Swedish Health Promoting Healthcare Network and the Built Environment. Health Promotion International 0(0) https://academic.oup.com/heapro/advance-article/doi/10.1093/heapro/daab101/6318106
2021
- [Journal paper] Forooraghi, M., Miedema, E., Ryd, N., & Wallbaum, H. (2021). How Does Office Design Support Employees’ Health? Case Study on the Relationships among Employees’ Perceptions of the Office Environment, Their Sense of Coherence and Office Design. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(23), 12779. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182312779
2020
- [Journal Paper] Forooraghi, M., Miedema, E., Ryd, N., & Wallbaum, H. (2020). Scoping review of health in office design approaches. Journal of Corporate Real Estate, 22(2), 155–180. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCRE-08-2019-0036
- [Peer-reviewed Conference Paper] Dumitrache, O., Miedema, E., & Dobre, C. C. (2020). Active Care – Building Design for Habilitation Centers. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 588. https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/588/3/032078
- [PhD Thesis] Miedema, E. (2020). Health-promotive building design [Chalmers University of Technology]. In doctoral thesis. https://research.chalmers.se/publication/515674/file/515674_Fulltext.pdf
- [Journal Paper] Marco Adelfio, Iqbal Hamiduddin & Elke Miedema (2020) London’s King’s Cross redevelopment: a compact, resource efficient and ‘liveable’ global city model for an era of climate emergency?, Urban Research & Practice, DOI: 1080/17535069.2019.1710860
2019
- [Peer-Reviewed Conference Paper] Miedema, E., Lindahl, G., & Elf, M. (2019). Health promotion and the built environment – views from Swedish care organisations. Paper presented at the Building for better health, research & innovation in architecture & urban design for care & health., Trondheim, Norway. https://research.chalmers.se/publication/510797/file/510797_Fulltext.pdf
- [Peer-reviewed Conference Paper] Roupé, M., Johansson, M., & Miedema, E. (2019). Exploring different design spaces-VR as a tool during building design. Pdfs.Semanticscholar.Org, 94–102. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9314/795274e6b89162543cdf3e749f747d1f4709.pdf
- [Journal Paper] Miedema, E., Lindahl, G., & Elf, M. (2019). Conceptualizing Health Promotion in Relation to Outpatient Healthcare Building Design: A Scoping Review. HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal, 12(1), 69–86. https://doi.org/10.1177/1937586718796651
2017
- [Conference Paper] Miedema, E.; Lindahl, G.L.; Elf, M. (2017) Health-promotive ambitions related to the built environment – the case of Angered Närsjukhus. ARCH17 Conference, April 26-28, 2017 Copenhagen, Denmark. https://research.chalmers.se/publication/248712/file/248712_Fulltext.pdf
- [Licentiate Thesis] Miedema, E. (2017) Health Promotion and Healthcare Architecture. (Licentiate), Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg. https://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/250520/250520.pdf
2015
- [Conference Poster] Miedema, E.(2015). Engaging stakeholders in Complex Design using Symbiosis in Development method. Design 4 Health Conference, July 13-16, 2015 Sheffield UK.
2012
- [Conference Presentation] E. Miedema (2012). “How can Architecture contribute to the re-socialization process of forensic psychiatric patients?” In the proceedings of the IAPS conference on Humans Experience in the Natural and Built environment: Implications for research, policy, and Practice.
Academic Service
Review & Editor roles
- Academic Committee, ARCH22 Conference (2022)
- PhD grading committee School of Architecture, Madrid University (2021)
- Reviewer at International Journal of Health Promotion and Education (2021*)
Reviewer at Designs (2020*)
Editor at Tasarım+Kuram Dergisi (Design+Theory Journal (2020*)