Altaf A Engineer

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Books

• Engineer, A., Ida, A., Jung, W., & Sternberg, E. (2024). Measuring the impact of the built environment on health, wellbeing, and performance: Techniques, methods, and implications for design research. doi:10.4324/9780367814748
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  This book reveals how subjective and objective data gathered by innovative methods of measurement give us the ability to quantify stress, health, performance, and wellbeing outcomes in different built environments. Design interventions informed by these measures, along with innovative integrated building materials, can shape the character of built environments for better health, productivity, and performance. These measures can help employers and managers calculate the return on investment (ROI) of various design interventions. Areas of inquiry in health and the built environment are discussed in three parts: Part 1 - Fundamentals: Human, Environment, and Material Measures for Health and Wellbeing; Part 2 - Methods: Measurement Techniques, Tools, and Methods for Health and Wellbeing; and Part 3 - Applications: Case Studies and Future Directions. The rapid pace of technical innovation and entrepreneurship by interdisciplinary research teams in health and the built environment has created a need for more publications such as this book, which discuss latest tools and methods of measuring the effects of the built environment on human physiology and psychology. Emerging tools and techniques are introduced for this field of built environment design, including virtual reality immersive environments and fisheye lens photograph simulations for human wellbeing impact measures integral to the design process. The potentials and limitations of bio-responsive material systems and integrated sensing devices with wearable technologies linked to the Internet of Things are discussed in relation to human wellbeing performance improvements. The book provides both the foundational knowledge and fundamentals for characterizing human health and wellbeing in the built environment as well as emerging trends and design research methods for innovations in this field. It will be of interest to researchers, educators, and students of architecture, interior design, and integrative medicine, as well as professionals working in health and the built environment.
• Engineer, A. A., Sternberg, E. M., & Ida, A. (2020). Healing Spaces: Designing Physical Environments to Optimize Health, Wellbeing and Performance. MDPI. doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17041155
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  IJERPH journal special issue reprint as an edited collection.
• Engineer, A. A., & Anthony, K. H. (2018). Shedding new light on art museum additions: Front stage and back stage experiences.. New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
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  Vast sums of money spent to design, construct, and maintain museum additions demand great accountability of museum leaders and design professionals towards visitors and employees. Museum visitors today come not only to view works of art, but also to experience museum architecture itself, resulting in most major cities competing to build new museum additions or new museum buildings to become world class tourist destinations.Shedding New Light on Art Museum Additions presents post-occupancy evaluations of four high-profile museums and their additions in the United States and helps museum stakeholders understand their successes, shortcomings, and how their designs affect both visitors and employees who use them every day. The book helps decision-makers assess the short-term and long-term impacts of future proposals for new museum additions and illuminates the critical importance of investing in employee work environments, and giving serious consideration to lighting, wayfinding, accessibility, and the effects of museum fatigue that arise from the lack of public amenities.Museum leaders, curators, architects, designers, consultants, patrons of the arts and museum visitors will find this book to be a useful resource when planning and evaluating new building additions.
• Engineer, A., & Anthony, K. (2017). Shedding new light on art museum additions: Front stage and back stage experiences. doi:10.4324/9781315443164
  More info

  Vast sums of money spent to design, construct, and maintain museum additions demand great accountability of museum leaders and design professionals towards visitors and employees. Museum visitors today come not only to view works of art, but also to experience museum architecture itself, resulting in most major cities competing to build new museum additions or new museum buildings to become world class tourist destinations. Shedding New Light on Art Museum Additions presents post-occupancy evaluations of four high-profile museums and their additions in the United States and helps museum stakeholders understand their successes, shortcomings, and how their designs affect both visitors and employees who use them every day. The book helps decision-makers assess the short-term and long-term impacts of future proposals for new museum additions and illuminates the critical importance of investing in employee work environments, and giving serious consideration to lighting, wayfinding, accessibility, and the effects of museum fatigue that arise from the lack of public amenities. Museum leaders, curators, architects, designers, consultants, patrons of the arts and museum visitors will find this book to be a useful resource when planning and evaluating new building additions.

Chapters

• Engineer, A. A. (2020). Immersive Physical Environment: Office Interiors and Preparedness. In Building and Implementing a Lifestyle Medicine Program: From Concept to Clinical Practice. New York, NY: Spring.

Journals/Publications

• Alaqtum, T., Engineer, A., & Moeller, C. (2024). Daylighting Glare and Design for Visual Comfort. Technology Architecture and Design, 8(1). doi:10.1080/24751448.2024.2322924
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  Daylighting and glare simulation provide architecture students, professionals, and researchers with the knowledge and skillsets to design environments for visual comfort. Conducting simulations is essential for better human health and reducing building energy consumption. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of a mixed-methods approach to designing a glare-free environment in a hot-arid region. It examines daylighting and glare distributions in different scenarios with combinations of architectural daylighting devices, such as shading devices, light shelves, etc., using Rhino 7, DIVA, and ClimateStudio. The study concludes by recommending a practical simulation approach for evaluating glare. In this case study, using a customized shading device/light shelf combined with efficient skylights reduces glare to imperceptible and increases the daylit area by 20%.
• Bernal, S. M., Engineer, A. A., & Chalfoun, N. V. (2020). Assessment of the implications of natural and mechanical ventilation on exposure to dust in the residential sector.. Vivienda y Comunidades Sustentables (Housing and Sustainable Communities),, 4(7), 77-91.
• Engineer, A., Ida, A., & Sternberg, E. M. (2020). Healing spaces: Designing physical environments to optimize health, wellbeing, and performance. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(Issue 4). doi:10.3390/ijerph17041155
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  This Special Issue on Healing Spaces includes eight articles consisting of studies at the interface between design and health. The articles address some of the latest findings using state-of-the-art technologies, important outcomes for human health and wellbeing, and suggest exciting directions for the future of this research field.
• Sternberg, E. M., Engineer, A. A., & Ida, A. (2019). Guest Editor, Special Issue IJERPH: Healing Spaces: Designing Physical Environments to Optimize Health, Wellbeing and Performance.. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
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  The field of design and health, previously the domain of healthcare design professionals, has now reached a turning point with the proliferation of a plethora of non-invasive wearable technologies to provide objective and near-real-time measurement of the impact of many features of the built environment on aspects of health, wellbeing and performance. In turn, new materials and the Internet of Things are allowing the development of smart buildings, which can interact with occupants to optimize their health, wellbeing, performance and overall experience. Companies previously focused on positioning themselves as “green” are now turning to positioning themselves in the marketplace as both green and healthy. This Special Issue will include articles that address new cutting edge technologies and materials at the interface between design and health, will review some of the latest findings of studies using these technologies, and will suggest exciting future directions for the field. It will include articles focused on objective data gathered to document the effects of the built environment on health. Importantly, it will focus on the use of innovative methods of measurement, such as state-of-the-art wearable and environmental sensors, quantifying aspects of health such as stress and relaxation responses, activity, posture, sleep quality, cognitive performance and wellbeing outcomes. It will also examine the impacts of different elements of the built environment on these health and wellbeing outcomes. Published articles will focus on design interventions informed by these measurements, along with innovative integrated building materials that can shape the design of built environments for better health, productivity, and performance. It will also address the return on investment (ROI) of such design interventions. The Special Issue will provide both the foundational knowledge and fundamentals for characterizing human health and wellbeing in the built environment, as well as emerging trends and design methods for innovations in this field.
• Sternberg, E. M., Engineer, A. A., & Oberman, H. (2018). Trauma, place, and transformation: Commentary on Place Spirituality. Archive for the Psychology of Religion..
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  Author of section on 'Place and Attachment' in a commentary article on 'Place Spirituality: An Attachment Perspective' by authors: Victor Counted and Hetty Zock in the Journal: Archive for the Psychology of Religion.
• Sternberg, E. M., Engineer, A. A., Ida, A., Ida, A., Engineer, A. A., & Sternberg, E. M. (2020). Healing Spaces: Designing Physical Environments to Optimize Health, Wellbeing and Performance.. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH), 17(115), 1-4.
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  Editorial, IJERPH journal special issue on Healing Spaces.
• Engineer, A. A., & Bernal, S. M. (2019). Towards a human-centered approach to art museum design. The International Journal of Architectonic, Spatial, and Environmental Design,, 13(3), 1-12.
• Engineer, A., Oberman, H., & Sternberg, E. M. (2019). Trauma, place, and transformation. Archive for the Psychology of Religion, 41(1), 26-32. doi:10.1177/0084672418824067
• Engineer, A. A., Sternberg, E. M., & Najafi, B. (2018). Designing Interiors to Mitigate Physical and Cognitive Deficits Related to Aging and to Promote Longevity in Older Adults. Gerontology, 64(6), 612-622. doi:10.1159/000491488
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  Background: With the increasing global population of older adults, there is a need for environmental interventions that directly affect their physical, psychological, and emotional well-being to help them maintain or regain their independence and autonomy – all of which promote longevity. Methods: To better understand potential opportunities and challenges associated with interior design and “future homes” that may promote well-being, aging in place, and independent living in older adults, the authors reviewed relevant literature and included their own expert opinions from a multidisciplinary point of view including interior design, wellness, and engineering. Results: After summarizing existing environmental interventions for the aging population and their effectiveness, this review reveals knowledge gaps in interior design for the well-being and longevity of older adults followed by a discussion of opportunities for future research that may fill these gaps. Some of these opportunities include finding habilitative design strategies that identify and address unique situational needs of each user, advancing multidisciplinary fields such as environmental gerontology that recreate security and independence for older adults even outside of their homes, implementing technically advanced design strategies, which are flexible and adaptive to individual needs; and integrating the Internet of things (IoT) into living environments, including voice-activated command technologies to improve seniors’ central role in enabling an optimized healthcare ecosystem. Conclusions: Knowledge of current evidence regarding the impact of different environmental factors may hasten adaptation of well-designed innovations that can provide optimal healing and living environments for the aging population. By effectively addressing older adults’ unique and specialized needs, design practitioners can become an indispensable part of their medical, social, and environmental team. One of the rapidly developing infrastructures promising to revolutionize the design of “future homes” is the IoT. While it is at an early stage of development, ultimately we envisage a connected home using voice-controlled technology and Bluetooth-radio-connected add-ons, to augment much of what home health does today. Bringing these approaches together into an effective strategy for a model of effective geriatric care is important and needs to become an integral part of both design education and practice.
• Bliss, A., & Engineer, A. (2015). [Re]making History: Authenticity, Architecture, and Tourism. The international journal of the constructed environment, 5(3-4), 21-33. doi:10.18848/2154-8587/cgp/v05i3-4/57876

Proceedings Publications

• Alaqtum, T., Engineer, A., & Moeller, C. (2021, April). From perception to design: Daylight glare mitigation in architectural spaces. In ARCC 2021.
• Alhabib, G., Bernal, S. M., Ida, A., & Engineer, A. A. (2020, November). Experimental tests of CAM Plants and Hydrogels for outdoor air pollutant filtration systems. In The 16th Conference of the International Society of Indoor Air Quality & Climate (Indoor Air 2020), Seoul, Korea (virtual), 1-6.
• Engineer, A. A. (2020, November). New synergies between research, education, and practice for health and wellbeing outcomes in the built environment. In EAAE-ARCC International Conference Proceedings, Valencia, Spain (virtual).

Presentations

• Engineer, A. A. (2021, March). DASH-SAFE and DASH-Well: Two Near Real-Time Geographic Information System-Based Tools for Risk Assessment and Emotion Mapping in the Built Environment. AIA Design & Health Research Consortium. Virtual: AIA.
• Engineer, A. A., & Kramer, B. (2021, May). Built environment considerations to reduce disease transmission in assisted living and skilled nursing facilities. EDRA52. Virtual (Detroit).
• Sternberg, E. M., & Engineer, A. A. (2021, October). Academic forum on COVID-19 and access to Health Services. U.S. - Mexico Bilateral Meeting for the Health of Migrants, Binational Health Week (Semana Binacional de Salud). Virtual (Phoenix, AZ).
• Sternberg, E. M., Li, S., Yang, B., Engineer, A. A., Stoker, P. A., Son, Y., Mehl, M. R., Chen, Y., & Blakiston, R. L. (2021, March). DASH-SAFE: A multi-modal geographic information system (GIS) dashboard for near real-time mapping of perceived COVID risk/safety in a campus environment. 2021 Integrative Medicine & Health Symposium Abstracts published in Global Advances in Health and Medicine. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona.
• Engineer, A. A. (2020, 04-04-2020). Confluence of design and technology to promote healthy aging and longevity in older adults. Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA51), Tempe, AZ.. Tempe, AZ.
• Engineer, A. A. (2020, June). New synergies between research, education, and practice for health and wellbeing outcomes in the built environment. EAAE-ARCC International Conference, Valencia, Spain. Valencia, Spain.
• Engineer, A. A. (2020, October). Health and Wellbeing in the Built Environment: Translating research into design outcomes through curriculum and research. Centre for Conscious Design (CCD) Festival. Phoenix, AZ (Virtual)..
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  Part of panel presentation:Health and Wellbeing in the Built Environment: Intro and Wearable health: from molecules to environment (Esther M. Sternberg); Translating research into design outcomes through curriculum and research (Altaf Engineer); Virtual Reality and Human Performance (Omar Youssef).
• Engineer, A. A., Bernal, S. M., Ida, A., & Alhabib, G. (2020, November). Experimental tests of CAM Plants and Hydrogels for outdoor air pollutant filtration systems. The 16th Conference of the International Society of Indoor Air Quality & Climate (Indoor Air 2020). Seoul, South Korea (Virtual).
• Sternberg, E. M., Yang, B., Li, S., Son, Y., & Engineer, A. A. (2020, November). DASH-SAFE: A personal real-time risk-assessment, risk-management, navigation and automated alarm tool.. COVID-19 Symposium, The University of Arizona Health Sciences Center (Virtual)..
• Sternberg, E. M., Yang, B., Li, S., Son, Y., & Engineer, A. A. (2020, September). DASH-SAFE: A Multi-Modal GIS-based Real-Time COVID Risk Assessment, Management, & Navigation Tool. Restruct Built Environment Research Symposium: Mid-Pandemic Adaptation,. Virtual.
• Baranski, E., Danvers, A., Kraft, A., Perez, A., Ziegler, M., Lindberg, C., Engineer, A., Sternberg, E. M., & Mehl, M. R. (2019, May). Personality prediction in aerospace engineers using a comprehensive sensing suite.. 31st Association for Psychological Science (APS) Annual Convention. Washington DC: Association for Psychological Science (APS).
• Engineer, A. A., & Bernal, S. (2019, May 2019). Towards a Human-Centered Approach to Art Museum Design. Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) 50. Brooklyn, NY: Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA).
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  This research presents post-occupancy evaluations of four high-profile art museum addition buildings in the United States constructed in the last 50 years. In this country alone, about 50 percent of all museums were involved in building construction, expansion or renovations in this period. Vast sums of money are spent in these processes including maintenance and operational costs, however, sustainable approaches to museum design and accountability towards visitors and employees are needed. This study, therefore, reflects the benefits of post-occupancy evaluations of real-world museum environments as an approach to evidence- based design. Taking a critical look at art museum additions, it answers the questions: How does museum addition design affect visitors’ and employees’ perceptions, experiences, sense of well-being, and comfort in “front stage” areas such as art galleries and “back stage” areas such as their work spaces?Reflecting on the last 50 years of museum additions can positively influence museum design for the next 50 years. This research, therefore, is an important topic for discussion in EDRA50 and its theme of Sustainable Urban Environments. The goal is to help decision-makers assess the short-term and long-term human impact of new museum addition projects. Museum leaders, curators, architects, and consultants may find this study to be a valuable resource for improving occupant well-being, social, and cultural experiences in new and existing museum buildings.
• Engineer, A. A., & Bernal, S. M. (2019, June). Environmental Design Strategies to Improve Visitation in State Museums Situated in Hot, Arid Climatic Conditions in the Southwest U.S.. Shared Cultural Heritages 2: Memory, Spaces, Experiences, and Boundaries, San Luis Potosí, Mexico.. San Luis Potosí, Mexico..
• Engineer, A. A., & Bernal, S. M. (2019, May). Towards a human-centered approach to art museum design: Learning from volunteers’ perceptions and experiences. Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA50), Brooklyn, NY.. Brooklyn, NY.
• Engineer, A. A., & Bernal, S. M. (2019, November). Human-centered art museum design: Learning from volunteers’ perceptions and experiences. Inclusive Museum Conference, Buenos Aires, Argentina.. Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• Youssef, O., & Engineer, A. A. (2019, December). A Comparison of Virtual Reality versus Real-life Experiences of Labyrinths to Test the Validity of Virtual Reality Simulations and their Influence on Human Performance.. Restruct Built Environment Research Symposium, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.. Tucson, AZ.
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  Invited panel by Sternberg, E.M., and Insel, K.: New Technologies for Measuring, Operating and Designing the Built Environment for Optimal Health
• Ziegler, M., Ha, R., Kraft, A., Perez, A., Danvers, A., Mehl, M. R., Sternberg, E. M., Engineer, A. A., & Baranski, E. (2019, July). Predictions of job performance and cognitive constructs using a combination of individual, interpersonal and environmental sensors. 10th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE 2019), Washington DC.. Washington DC.
• Engineer, A. A. (2018, September). Health and wellbeing in the built environment: Connecting education, research, and practice.. College of Fine and Applied Arts Legacy Awards, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignIllinois School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL..
• Engineer, A. A., Chambers, S., & Youssef, O. (2018, April). Comparison of Virtual Reality versus Real-life Experiences of Labyrinths. UA Integrative Medicine Research Initiative, University of Arizona. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, Tucson, AZ.
• Engineer, A., Sternberg, E. M., & Ida, A. (2018, July). University of Arizona Institute on Place, Wellbeing, and Performance, and the Master of Science in Architecture Health & Built Environment (MS. Arch HBE) curriculum.. AIA Collaborative Research Summit, AIA Design and Health Consortium. Minneapolis, MN: American Institute of Architects (AIA).
• Engineer, A. A., & Sallam, A. (2017, November 2017). The Hex House: A rapidly deployable, dignified home. Shelter with Dignity workshop, 2017 AIA Minnesota Convention. Minneapolis, MN: AIA Minnesota.

Poster Presentations

• Chen, Y., Hyde, J., Morton, C., Berryhill, A., Engineer, A. A., Parthasarathy, S., Son, Y., & Sternberg, E. M. (2021, April). Development of a complementary system for 3D personal CO2 bubble visualization to improve sleep quality and cognitive performance. Research to Innovation Showcase, BIO5 Institute, University of Arizona,. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona.
• Sternberg, E. M., Engineer, A. A., Youssef, O. M., Youssef, O. M., Sternberg, E. M., & Engineer, A. A. (2020, January). Wearable devices to measure the impact of built environments on health. Department of Medicine Annual Poster Session, University of Arizona. University of Arizona, Tucson AZ..

Others

• Engineer, A. A. (2019, October). Keynote speech: Human-centered and equitable built environments: Making an impact for health and wellbeing for all. Second International Conference on Architecture 2019, University of Sonora, Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico. Theme: Resilient Communities..