The October 2012 issue of Metropolis Magazine includes an insightful article chronicling the unique considerations Western architecture firms must address when designing healthcare facilities for oversees markets. From the article:
For health-care designers working in far-flung regions, learning to patch the seams that split as West meets East (and Middle East), is as important as calculating volumes, systems, and energy loads. In China, designers need to produce structures that integrate best-in-class Western technologies with time-tested traditional Chinese medicine. In India, developers want new hospitals to conform to the thousand-year-old practice of vastu shastra—the Hindu version of China’s feng shui. In the Islamic world, facility plans must include prayer and ablution rooms, along with gender-specific waiting areas. And plans must be jiggered to ensure that not a single toilet in any facility faces Mecca.