HCD Guest Author

HCD Guest Author's Latest Posts

Caring for the Caregiver

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...

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...

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...

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

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...

Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series