The current health system is highly reliant on advanced technology and logistical systems. For instance, the whole lifecycle of medical products including production, transportation, storage, and sales, cannot survive without strict temperature controls and immense logistical systems that stitch together the disparate geographies that are activated through them. Thus, the current health system is entirely dependent on techno-logistical systems and therefore highly susceptible to failure.

Social environment is represented by demographics and social relationships, which may result in inequality of health services and access. Social support from both family members and communities are important to mental health and chronic diseases, but sprawling suburbs make people live far away from others and impose a high level of isolation.

The surrounding physical environment we are having direct contact with has intricate impacts upon our body system, including green spaces, urban patterns, modes of transportation, food resources, density, and pollution, etc.

The production of health resources and distribution of health facilities are so concentrated at urban areas that logistics and transportation plays a crucial role in it, and that broad suburbs have very limited access to health.

In response to these three essential health factors and regarding them as three strategies to approach health, the project proposes multiple scales of inter-related interventions.

The state of Virginia which has access to both mountains and water has a rich history of local medicinal plants cultivation back to the colonial period. Those plants’ habitats vary from mountainous areas to wetlands, and therefore have various requirement s for humidity, soil, sunlight, as well as altitude. Based on this information, a system of medicinal plants production and transportation network is proposed.

In the 21st century, Northern Virginia would see an influx of population, because of its mild climate as a middle latitude area, Also, more job opportunities are generated by the incoming technological corporations. The idea is to use the metro line, existing trials and highways as an infrastructural spine to reorganize and reconfigure the settlements, in order to encourage the use of public transit and bikes to avoid further unplanned urban sprawl as the increase of population.

Crystal city is selected as a test site for experimenting with the grounding of the various health strategies. As the site of the Amazon second headquarter, this area presents a great opportunity for establishing a series of design strategies for a more open and more accessible healthy communities. Meanwhile, the project also consider the relationship of corporations and urban environments in which big corporations play an important role in shaping urban spaces.