The big debate: will building standardisation stifle local creativity?

There’s an intriguing debate going on in the world of healthcare right now which centres on whether the next wave of hospital buildings should be governed by strict design standardisation or freed up to ride a wave of deregulation and localism.

It’s a debate that many professionals in office facilities will recognise. A tension between best-practice global design standards and the need to tailor individual workplaces to local cultures and requirements has long been present in the strategies of large firms with extensive office portfolios around the world.

Devoid of local context

Consider what’s at stake in hospital design. Standardisation of design processes has led to long delays in delivering new projects in some cases, and criticism too of prescriptive design for identikit hospitals devoid of local context that are then just plonked down in cities.

But deregulation also divides opinion, usually across a political divide. The prospect of local identity and accountability must be weighed against the spectre of compromised safety, as epitomised by the deregulation horrors at the heart of the Grenfell Tower tragedy.

The battlelines for the future are now drawn like this. Champions of a more centralised approach based around standards point to the opportunity for great safety and quality, faster construction, and more shared design learning and knowledge. Advocates for less regulation and more local autonomy point to the opportunity for less red tape, faster approvals, more flexibility, and more creativity and variety in design.

Subtle differences

I recently led a workshop at the European Healthcare Design conference 2025 which explored the argument from all sides. What emerged was a subtle difference between standards, which provide clear guiderails for projects, and standardisation, which runs the risks of locking in design obsolescence over time.

What also emerged was the obvious parallel with workplace design, an area in which a ‘flight to quality’ in office buildings has been fuelled by a rise in green and wellness standards and certification programmes.

According to architect Sunand Prasad of Perkins & Will, who is also programme director of the European Healthcare Design conference, the arguments can be summarised in a single question: ‘How can we balance the economic advantages of centralised prescription,’ he asks, ‘with the advantages for quality and a sense of ownership engendered by local decision-making?’

In other words, if we want buildings that really create a sense of place and truly engage with their users, then we need to weigh the benefits of standardisation against what a strong feeling of local ownership can bring to the party. That is true whether the building is a hospital, office block or social housing.

Stringent standards

Developers of office buildings will argue with some justification that closer attention to occupier comfort in workplace design, with more stringent standards and bigger budgets, enables projects to steer clear of the dangers of deregulation in a way that some public sector health and housing schemes cannot afford it do.

Offices can therefore use design and technology to create environments that meet the most important global standards will simultaneously tailoring the environment to the local culture.

However, as the return to office has hardly been an overnight success, it is also evident that people crave being more than just a cog in the well-oiled machine of an identikit global workplace. Local context, local creativity and local accountability must play a part in building the next wave of office buildings.

This is a debate that will run and run.