Architect-juror shares observations from national healthcare design competition
[Chicago, IL] – Each year, Healthcare Design magazine seeks out leading professionals to judge its Healthcare Design Showcase. For the third year in a row, the organization invited Legat Architects’ Steve Blye to join its jury.
Blye joined 18 others including architects, interior designers, academics, and healthcare leaders from across the country to select the best in healthcare facilities design from among 55 entries.
Participating partners in the competition included The Center for Health Design, the International Interior Design Association, and the American Society of Interior Designers. Projects will be published in the August issue of Healthcare Design.
See winners at Healthcare Design.
Blye’s Observations
Healing Sanctuaries
As hospital systems continue to open outpatient facilities, it’s not surprising that both this year’s Award of Merit winners are cancer centers. According to Blye, the projects respect their natural surroundings while comforting patients.
He said, “When a cancer patient approaches a facility, she wants to feel like she’s entering a healing sanctuary rather than a sterile medical center.”
He cites one winner, a unique pinwheel-shaped oncology center in Anaheim. “The facility is filled with relaxing gestures to reduce the intimidation factor.”
Blye praised the exterior glazing’s dot patterned trees that subtly blend with the surrounding vegetation. Interiors have a clean look, while a central wood wall “warms them up.”
That project also had linear accelerators with skylights and views to vertical gardens. Blye said, “Compared to photos typically used, the real nature offers a much more therapeutic feel to help calm patients. Plus, this is the first time I’ve seen skylights in these vault-like, radiation-absorbing treatment centers.”
The other major winner, a Phoenix-based cancer center, features natural stone, copper, and dark bronze intermixed through the exterior and interior. Additionally, its kite-like triangular sunscreens not only provide shade, but also function as a decorative element. Within the facility, copper-patterned semi-screened glass partitions offer privacy in chemotherapy areas.
Blye said, “It’s a wonderful example of a dessert vernacular in a tasteful aesthetic that doesn’t resort to gimmickry.”
He also noted that both winning projects exemplify designers and healthcare providers working together to advance processes. One Montana hospital representative said it best: “No new spaces without new processes.”
“You can’t build a nice new building, then move in and do everything the same,” said Blye. “Instead, the clients for these projects were, in effect, saying, ‘Tell us how you can do better, then we’ll build it for you to get you started.’”
A Need for More Welcoming Interiors
One disconcerting observation was a movement away from warm, hospitable interiors. Blye argues that some healthcare architects might be imposing their preference for stark environments on healthcare facilities. Thus, several entries this year, according to Blye, were too cold and clinical in their aesthetic.
“During the last couple of decades, the healthcare design industry shifted toward more nature-infused interiors that used materials like natural stone and wood to create a hotel-like ambiance,” he said. “Now there appears to be a movement back toward interiors that are sterile and colorless . . . an austere look preferred by many designers but not necessarily by patients. The evidence reveals that warmer, home-like environments reduce patient stress and promote healing.”
Blye posits that the increase in less welcoming interiors might be blowback from the 2008 recession. Healthcare providers and architects want to show patients a no-nonsense, high-tech approach to efficient and economic service.
Avoid Disneyfication
On the opposite end of the spectrum, some of this year’s entries, says Blye, leaned toward “Disneyfication,” or the use of faux (and in some cases, garish) add-ons to make spaces seem more lively. He offers the examples of pastel-colored ceilings, cartoonish graphics, and other types of imitation spaces.
Blye said, “Plunking these sort of elements into the design is a kind of aesthetic shortcut that quickly grows dated.”
The Next Phase for Healthcare Environments
Blye encourages his fellow healthcare designers to aim for architecture/interior design that is user-friendly and accessible to all ages and levels of sophistication.
“As designers, we need to strive to make the healthcare facility a ‘third place.’ Not a home, not an office, but a healthcare center that’s a comforting retreat.”
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Magazine image used with permission of Healthcare Design.
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