dr.ir. J. van der Zwart (Johan)

Johan is a postdoc researcher ‘Citizen Science, responsible innovation in healthcare technology’ at the department of Science, Technology and Policy Studies (STePS) of the University of Twente, working within the projects ‘TOPFIT Citizenlab’ and ‘Releasing the power of users – articulating user interests to accelerate new innovative pathways in digital health and welfare sector’, in collaboration with the University of Stavanger (Norway).

Building up/on his previous work as researcher and teacher in the field of architecture, landscape architecture and healthcare management, his research focus is on the interaction between technology, people, process and place. His distinct contribution to projects is based on his holistic, transdisciplinary approach, connecting different disciplines from an in-depth understanding of scientific research and design of healthcare service systems.

He holds an MSc in Architecture (2001) from Delft University of Technology and an MSc Healthcare Management (2016) from the Erasmus University Rotterdam. His PhD thesis ‘Building for a better hospital, value-adding management & design of healthcare real estate’ (2014) presents a toolbox for decision-making regarding hospital buildings, as a reference for alignment between the architecture of the physical environment and the organisation of healthcare. He was project leader of the 2019 Architecture Research Care and Health (ARCH19) Conference, organized in the Knowledge Centre of the St Olav Hospital in Trondheim, and guest-editor of a special edition on this conference in the Healthcare Environment Research and Design (HERD) Journal. He is author and co-author of several books, book chapters and articles in landscape architecture and healthcare architecture research and design.

Johan worked previously as project architect (1998-2004), assistant professor landscape architecture (2001-2008), PhD researcher healthcare real estate (2008-2014) and postdoc researcher architecture and health (2015-2018). Besides his work as researcher at the University of Twente, he works as assistant professor architecture and health (2018-today) at the NTNU Norwegian university of Science and Technology in Trondheim. As project leader Smart Hospital Architecture and inter-faculty research coordinator for the NTNU Health research focus area, he contributed to several European and Norwegian research proposals, pushing forward the concepts of smart architecture, Enterprise Building Information Modelling (EBIM) and Artificial Intelligence for the smart hospital of the future.