Diana Araoz-Fraser

Vice President and Studio Design Leader at HKS Architects, where she leads healthcare design initiatives focused on patient experience, functionality, and user-centered solutions. She is also an adjunct professor at George Washington University and a board member of The Children's Inn at the National Institutes of Health.

Healthy Buildings Should Become the Baseline, Not a Premium Upgrade

At Aspen Ideas: Health, Joseph Allen, Rachel Hodgdon and Diana Araoz-Fraser argue that buildings should be treated as public-health infrastructure, not neutral containers for daily life. Their case is that the prevailing baseline still tolerates poor ventilation, weak filtration, chemical exposure, heat risk, inaccessible design and other hazards, even though technical fixes are already available. The remaining challenge, they say, is to make health a standard requirement in codes, retrofits and ordinary buildings rather than a premium feature in elite projects.

The Aspen InstituteJun 30, 202619 min read