Prevention through Design: Architecture Student Cognizance

Prevention through Design (PtD) is a process to prevent and control any potential injury occurrences, illnesses, and fatalities by “designing out” or minimizing hazards and risks early in the designing building. It is a process that incorporates related safety-design strategies during the design phase. Due to an overwhelming number of construction industry accidents in recent years, early attention to safety precautions in the design process has been of very deep concern. The lack of PtD knowledge among designers could be a barrier to implement the PtD concept, from improving the life-cycle of the project to considering safety matters that start from the design stage. Especially in Malaysia, architecture-based programs are generally focused on their design goals at the institutional level, and they aim towards accomodating end-user safety. However, there is no space for a new PtD-centric course to be introduced. Although there have been previous studies on the introduction of PtD, specific studies on the presence of PtD education in architecture programs are still lacking. This paper, therefore, seeks to obtain constructive feedback on prevention through design and its awareness among architecture students. The ideal period of PtD exposure is by scholastic interference to further express the importance of safety concerns in an early design process. Thus, a total of 60 respondents were selected among third-year to fourth-year architecture students in Universiti Teknologi MARA Seri Iskandar Campus in Perak. The findings showed that educational engagement strengthened students’ views on the causality of accidents and promoted safe design thought at the initial design process. However, in the design course, insufficient emphasis on PtD proves to be a challenge for students to consider in the design project application. Further studies are therefore deemed necessary to identify the method of incorporating PtD sentience through scholastic intervention as an initiative to promote PtD in university degree programs to enhance awareness of safety issues.