Pediatric Ethics

BPR Lab

The Aims, Scope, and History of the Bioethics of Built Space

The BPR Lab emerged at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, a moment that brought into painfully clear relief something the field had long known but not yet fully theorized: the built environment has profound effects on the persons living and working inside it, and core bioethical questions are deeply embedded in the design and construction of healthcare spaces.

The group began when Diana Anderson—who had already been working to bring her training in architecture and medicine into closer conversation—met Stowe Teti during her fellowship at the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School, where Stowe was a member of the core teaching faculty. As the pandemic exposed how healthcare facilities do not merely house care but actively shape safety, vulnerability, behavior, and experience, those conversations took on new urgency. Diana’s colleague Bill Hercules traveled to Boston, and the three met to reflect on what Covid was revealing and how they might contribute—not only by seeking solutions, but by helping articulate and elevate awareness of what would become a central idea in the group’s work: the bioethics of built space.

That phrase became the title of the group’s most widely recognized research paper and helped name a field of inquiry that sits at the intersection of architecture, medicine, ethics, and health systems design. David Deemer, a physician whose work is focused on geriatric care, later joined the collaboration, and the four have remained in partnership ever since.

Since its beginning, the lab’s work has grown from that founding insight: built space is not a neutral backdrop to care. It can constrain or enable agency, influence perception and behavior, distribute risk unevenly, and shape the moral texture of everyday life in healthcare institutions. The BPR Lab was formed to study those realities with greater conceptual rigor and to develop a body of scholarship capable of bringing design, clinical practice, and bioethical reflection into more faithful relation.