Justine Baltessen, ARIDO, NCIDQ, IDC, LEED GA, senior interior designer, HDR
Since joining HDR (Ottawa, Ontario) in 2021, Justine Baltessen has become one of the firm’s go-to voices on the complex interior requirements of healthcare environments. Over the past five years, she has focused exclusively on healthcare design, quickly mastering the technical, operational, and regulatory demands unique to clinical spaces. Today, she’s one of the firm’s trusted internal resources on materials, infection prevention, and accessibility standards that shape how clinical environments perform.
That combination of interior design fluency and clinical rigor is especially visible in her work on the Quinte Health Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital in Picton, Ontario, an unencapsulated all-mass-timber acute care facility scheduled to open in early 2028. To balance the project’s architectural goals with clinical rigor, she’s developing new approaches to finish transitions, fixture placement, lighting integration, and patient room detailing.
One of the more complex challenges involves the hospital’s main corridors and common areas, where exposed cross-laminated timber (CLT) ceilings serve as a defining architectural feature. In a conventional hospital build, devices, services, and acoustic treatments typically sit within dropped ceilings. Here, Baltessen led the effort to relocate those elements, preserving the CLT structure’s visual impact while meeting stringent infection prevention requirements.
Beyond the office, Baltessen is on the Provincial Community Leadership Council for the Association of Registered Interior Designers of Ontario (ARIDO). She teaches a healthcare design studio in the interior design program at Algonquin College (Ottawa), and she continues to pursue advanced certifications in infection prevention and accessibility, deepening the expertise her colleagues and students rely on.
Here, Baltessen talks about her career path, favorite project to date, and what industry challenge she’d like to tackle.
Q+A with Justine Baltessen, 2026 HCD Rising Star
Healthcare Design: What drew you to a career in healthcare design?
Justine Baltessen: I’m fundamentally drawn to the immense challenge of designing for health. Healthcare facilities are among the most demanding environments on Earth; they must run constantly without fail and remain adaptable, flexible, and resilient under pressure. This operational complexity excites me.
It’s a field where design cannot just be beautiful; it must serve an incredibly wide range of users with varying physical abilities, cognitive capacities, and heightened emotional states. My goal is to master that high-stakes puzzle using rigorous spatial logic and universal design to create beautiful healing environments that meet intense demands while effortlessly accommodating the diverse humanity inside them.
HCD: Describe your design approach in 10 words or less.
Baltessen: Inclusive, universally accessible design bridging stakeholder vision with technical feasibility.
HCD: What are you working on now?
Baltessen: My current portfolio spans from coast to coast across Canada. As the interior design lead, I’m steering several major projects, with the majority actively in construction. In Nova Scotia, HDR is partnered with another firm, and I am leading the healthcare portion of an integrated health and long-term care facility. My work also includes a multiphase hospital renovation in British Columbia and the transformation of a former Toronto police station to a community health center.
Most notably, the Quinte Health Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital is under construction and will be North America’s first unencapsulated mass-timber hospital.
HCD: What has been your most rewarding project to date?
Baltessen: Without a doubt, it’s the Quinte Health Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital. It represents a massive paradigm shift in clinical architecture. Merging the strict, sterile requirements of modern healthcare with the biophilic, sustainable benefits of mass timber has been an incredible technical puzzle. Seeing this pioneering structure come to life, knowing it sets a new benchmark for environmental and human health, is profoundly rewarding.
HCD: How do you define success?
Baltessen: At its core, success is about setting meaningful goals and having the determination to achieve them. Every accomplishment begins with a clear purpose, whether that’s designing a healthcare environment that improves the patient’s experience, growing as a leader, or reaching a personal milestone. As a healthcare interior designer, I measure success by the positive impact my work has on the well-being of patients, families, and caregivers.
Teaching yoga has reinforced the importance of balance, mindfulness, and staying connected to purpose. Success is rarely achieved alone—it comes from collaborating with talented teams, supporting others, and leading with empathy. My own success has been built through steady grit, independence, perseverance, and a commitment to creating meaningful outcomes for the people and communities I serve.
HCD: What’s a challenge you’d like to see the healthcare design industry address in the coming year—and why?
Baltessen: Creating more adaptable and resilient care environments. Healthcare is evolving rapidly, with changing patient needs, new technologies, staffing pressures, and shifting care models. Facilities need spaces that can flex over time without costly renovations.
By prioritizing adaptable planning, flexible infrastructure, and multipurpose environments, designers can help organizations respond more effectively to future demands. This approach not only improves operational efficiency and long-term value but also enhances the experience of patients, families, and care teams.
HCD: What’s a must-have skill you think any healthcare designer needs to succeed today?
Baltessen: Multifaceted compassion. You must possess the rigorous spatial logic required for complex buildings, but your greatest tool is the commitment to see a hospital from different user perspectives. Success hinges on looking at a layout not just as a designer, but through the eyes of an exhausted nurse, vulnerable patient, worried family member navigating a crisis, facility manager maintaining operations, and the executive board. You need the collaborative skill to understand and align each stakeholder’s goals, translating their collective vision into a feasible layout while fiercely protecting the human experience at the center of it.
Recognition at the 2026 HCD Conference + Expo
The 2026 Rising Stars will be celebrated during an Awards Luncheon at the Healthcare Design Conference + Expo, Oct. 17-20 in New Orleans. Find updates and additional information on the event here.
Click here to read more about all of HCD’s 2026 Rising Stars.
