Hao Zhong, AIA, EDAC, architect, EwingCole
Hao Zhong’s career has been a quick ascent. After earning his Master of Architecture from the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (New York) in 2022, Zhong joined EwingCole (New York), where he began working exclusively in healthcare design.
Within three years, he became a registered architect and earned his Evidence-Based Design Accreditation and Certification (EDAC). Over that same span, he moved from production support into a more active role in design thinking and project decision-making, contributing to work for clients such as Bayhealth (Dover, Del.), Northwell Health (Lake Success, N.Y.), and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York).
A recent measure of his skills and growth is his work on the Northwell Health Victoria and Lloyd Goldman Health Care Pavilion, a 215,000-square-foot multispecialty outpatient facility on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The project, slated to open in 2027, used a data-driven simulation to test and validate a centralized registration and intake model. Zhong helped translate these operational strategies into spatial and experiential design. He also led the advanced 3D visualization and a project flythrough. That work became a key communication tool for hospital leadership, aligning internal teams and supporting external fundraising.
Additionally, Zhong explores new directions in healthcare design through independent and conceptual work. One of his projects, The Ripple Hospice, reimagines end-of-life care within a dense urban context, integrating hospice environments into civic life rather than hiding them. With EwingCole colleagues, he’s also rethinking the birth journey and future care delivery models in a proposal, Natalium: Reimagining the Architecture of Birth. The project is a finalist in the 2026 Breaking Through conceptual design competition, which will be presented on stage at the upcoming HCD Conference + Expo in New Orleans.
Here, Zhong talks about his career path, favorite project to date, and what industry challenge he’d like to tackle.
Q+A with Hao Zhong, 2026 HCD Rising Star
Healthcare Design: What drew you to a career in healthcare design?
Hao Zhong: I’ve always been fascinated by architecture’s ability to shape how people experience the world around them. When I joined EwingCole after graduate school, I didn’t realize healthcare would become my passion. Working alongside clients, clinicians, and multidisciplinary teams showed me how thoughtful design can improve patient experiences, support caregivers, and strengthen communities. That experience completely changed my perspective on architecture. Today, what inspires me most is healthcare’s unique ability to combine design, research, technology, and human empathy to create environments that make a meaningful difference in people’s lives.
HCD: Describe your design approach in 10 words or less.
Zhong: Designing care for life’s most meaningful moments.
HCD: What are you working on now?
Zhong: I’m currently balancing responsibilities across project delivery, construction administration, and conceptual design exploration. I’m supporting the delivery of a major healthcare campus expansion in Delaware while continuing construction administration for a hospital expansion project in New York. Alongside these built projects, I’m contributing to a conceptual proposal that reimagines the birth journey through architecture, exploring how healthcare environments can better support patients, families, and caregivers.
HCD: What has been your most rewarding project to date?
Zhong: The Northwell Health Goldman Health Care Pavilion. It fundamentally changed how I think as a designer because it was my first healthcare project that followed the progression from early design into project delivery. Developing design concepts for interior spaces challenged me to move beyond form-making and balance client goals, clinical operations, regulatory requirements, and multidisciplinary coordination while preserving the design intent.
HCD: How do you define success?
Zhong: To me, success means continuing to grow with every project, learning from colleagues, clinicians, and clients, and sharing those lessons with others. If my work leaves healthcare a little more compassionate, intuitive, and accessible than before, I consider that a meaningful measure of success.
HCD: What’s a challenge you’d like to see the healthcare design industry address in the coming year—and why?
Zhong: As healthcare continues to evolve, I’d like to see our industry focus on reducing complexity rather than adding to it. AI and digital health technologies offer tremendous opportunities, but they should simplify care—not make it more difficult for patients, families, and caregivers to navigate.
Healthcare designers play an important role in integrating innovation while keeping environments intuitive, accessible, and fundamentally human-centered. The best innovations are often those that make complex systems feel simple.
HCD: What’s a must-have skill you think any healthcare designer needs to succeed today?
Zhong: Translation. Healthcare designers are constantly translating between different perspectives—patients, clinicians, operators, engineers, contractors, and owners—while balancing codes, workflows, technology, and design intent. Great healthcare design doesn’t come from optimizing a single piece of the puzzle; it comes from understanding the entire system and translating complexity into healthcare environments that are intuitive, efficient, and deeply human-centered.
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.
