From broad strokes ideas, such as starting with a set of guiding principles that ensure clients’ needs are met. to specific solutions, like indirect lighting in patient settings and healing gardens for patients, staff, and visitors, architects work toward hospitals that are healthier, by design.
Medical practice has come a long way since the days of applying more leeches as a cure-all; modern advances in hospital design anticipate and accommodate changes in technology and practice while bolstering the case for healthier patients through better spaces. Architects can shape facilities around broad strategies such as patient-first thinking and evidence-based design. But they can also incorporate more finely grained details, down to optimal placement of equipment and lighting fixture arrangement as well as staff and visitor amenities that, in concert, produce healthcare facilities that help people heal faster–and with fewer leeches.
Better spaces, healthier people
A 2004 report examining more than 600 studies on the impact of hospital design on clinical outcomes found evidence that design plays a significant role: “Improved physical settings can be an important tool in making hospitals safer, more healing, and better places to work.” Yet figuring out where to begin design decisions in an ever-changing realm of technological innovations can be daunting.
It can help to have early conversations with your architect about your needs, whether the scope is a renovation of an aging hospital facility or a new structure designed to house doctors practicing the most current medicine with state-of-the-art devices. Every hospital project has its own unique set of constraints, such as site and budget, and an architect shows the possibilities that will work in each specific situation.
Read the full story at Topic Architecture.