Heejin Park, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, WELL AP, architect, HOK
Heejin Park moves between the technical demands of clinical space and the larger question of how a facility performs over time, bringing both perspectives to her project work.
Park began focusing on healthcare design at Heerim Architects (Seoul, South Korea). She later joined GE HealthCare (Seoul) as a site planning designer, working with providers across Asia and Oceania to integrate advanced imaging technology into clinical environments. That role taught her how equipment, workflow, and space fit together.
In 2023, after earning her Master of Architecture in Urban Design from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (Cambridge, Mass.), she started practicing as an architect at HOK (Boston), where the clinical and systems-based sides of her thinking converge.
Recently, she has been involved in several major healthcare infrastructure projects, including a surgical suite expansion at Jersey City Medical Center in Jersey City, N.J., which opened in April 2026. Park led coordination for a hybrid-ready operating room built to support robotic surgical systems and integrated audiovisual platforms.
She’s also turned her systems lens toward broader industry challenges. Through an HOK research competition, Park and her colleagues studied coastal healthcare facilities’ vulnerability to flooding and extreme weather. Their proposed framework treats the medical campus as an adaptive system, with elevated circulation, ecological buffers, and distributed energy designed to keep care running through natural disasters.
Here, Park talks about her career path, favorite project to date, and what industry challenge she’d like to tackle.
Q+A with Heejin Park, 2026 HCD Rising Star
Healthcare Design: What drew you to a career in healthcare design?
Heejin Park: Outside the industry, healthcare is often perceived as more functional than architectural, with little room for design ambition. I see it differently: A building that shapes people’s lives and well-being demands the highest level of design rigor. That potential is what first drew me to the field.
HCD: Describe your design approach in 10 words or less.
Park: Notice what others miss. Design until the problem disappears.
HCD: What are you working on now?
Park: Right now, my work spans two very different scales. I am working on a
major hospital expansion in New Jersey, where detailed coordination of clinical technologies within individual spaces has to be considered alongside the long-term vision for the medical campus. Outside of project work, I am developing ideas for an internal HOK design competition exploring how urban design can respond to global demographic shifts, from declining birth rates to aging populations. I enjoy moving between these two scales because both ask the same question: How can design create healthier futures?
HCD: What has been your most rewarding project to date?
Park: My most rewarding project was my first healthcare project, Chungnam National University Sejong Hospital in Sejong-si, South Korea. Before design began, I visited several hospitals expecting to study their operations. Instead, I was struck by how architecture could quietly support people through moments of uncertainty and hope. Working on the project from concept through completion taught me how to translate that insight into architecture through constant dialogue with users, engineers, and architects. This project convinced me that healthcare design was not simply where I wanted to work but where I wanted to grow.
HCD: How do you define success?
Park: For me, success is simple: showing up fully for the work in front of me and still feeling energized by it at the end of the day.
HCD: What’s a challenge you’d like to see the healthcare design industry address in the coming year—and why?
Park: One of the greatest contradictions in healthcare today is that an industry dedicated to protecting human health is also responsible for roughly 8.5 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to “Health Care Pollution And Public Health Damage In The United States: An Update,” published in December 2020 by Health Affairs. Too often, sustainability is treated as luxury hospitals cannot afford given their operational demands. Yet climate change is already disrupting healthcare through extreme weather and infrastructure failures. This year, I would like our industry to stop waiting for the perfect solution and design sustainability into every healthcare project from the start.
HCD: What’s a must-have skill you think any healthcare designer needs to succeed today?
Park: Physical and mental resilience. Healthcare design involves countless stakeholders and constant complexity. It takes real stamina to navigate both without losing clarity. I believe designers bring what they carry. A healthier mind tends to produce healthier design.
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.
