The movement in healthcare design toward patient-centered care and healing environments is often reflected in healthcare facility features meant to mitigate the stressful nature of serious illness. Preliminary research has shown that providing space for families in...
HCD Guest Author
HCD Guest Author's Latest Posts
Pyramid Power
You have seen it before. There is hesitation to engage in the next project. Past experiences have soured the building process. Changes have caused you to overrun your budget. Your project slipped behind schedule. Your construction manager's staff worked exhausting...
Chair
I'm no expert on seating, but I know what I like. I have a feeling most readers will agree with me that you know whether a chair is a “friendly sit” within seconds of sitting on it. Does it hold you firmly but comfortably, inviting you to linger a while? Or is it...
The Low-Voltage Systems Designer: A New Kid on the Block
The healthcare industry has experienced drastic changes in the past few years. Nursing and other staff shortages, combined with an aging population and continually rising life-expectancy rates, have pushed the demand for caregivers well past the supply available. As a...
Key Considerations in Patient Room Design, Part 1
Who would have imagined 10 years ago, when industry experts were predicting the downsizing of the inpatient hospital, that 2005 would bring a boom in construction of bed towers? Besides the increased need for beds in many markets, the obsolescence of the hospital...
Planning considerations for the minimally invasive surgical suite
Advances in healthcare are occurring at an awesome rate. A hospital's design must keep up with changing technology, as well as the attitudes of staff and patients. One example is the design of operating rooms and their associated space as minimally invasive surgery...
Rebirth
As trees start to show their new growth, bulbs begin to peek their way up from the thawing winter ground, and daylight hours grow longer, signaling the end of the “gray season,” I feel a sense of rebirth. All organizations go through growing pains. Having been with...
Let the Sunshine In
Project Summary
Client: The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Architecture: KMD Architects (structural shell and core); FKP Architects, Inc. (programming, medical planning, interior design, equipment and space planning)
Photography: Hedrich Blessing, Geoffrey Lyon
Opened: March 2005
Total Project Area: 780,000 sq. ft. (includes 590 examination rooms, 75 chemotherapy beds)
Total Cost: $366.4 million
Cost/Sq. Ft.: $470
Texas A&M Architecture Students Design Sustainable Medical Center for Texas Health Resources
On December 2, 2005, junior and senior Texas A&M University Architecture students unveiled 14 different design concepts for a 269,000-square-foot medical building emphasizing sustainability and patient access. The presentations took place at the Dallas...
LEED and Healthcare are Compatible
Over the past decade, increasing attention has been focused on the principles of sustainable, high-performance green building design and construction as a solution to the well-documented, significant environmental effects of the conventional construction, operation,...
Environmental Controls
Low-E glass PPG Industries presents Solarban® 70XL glass, a new solar control low-E glass that offers solar control and visible-light transmittance with a transparent, color-neutral appearance. In a standard one-inch insulating glass unit, Solarban 70XL has a solar...
Is ‘semiprivate’ always an oxymoron?
The current movement toward all-private inpatient rooms has been largely cheered by patients, caregivers, and designers. But is a 100% private configuration necessarily the best plan for all units? Do semiprivate rooms still have a place in the healthcare industry's...











