Breaking Through

Breaking Through 2024

The finale of Healthcare Design’s fourth annual conceptual design competition, Breaking Through, was held at the 2024 Healthcare Design Conference + Expo in Indianapolis, Oct. 5-8, with SmithGroup taking home the top prize for The Decaf Hospital concept.

The competition encourages healthcare design innovation by asking participants to present concepts that solve challenges anticipated in the future delivery of care. The 2024 program was sponsored by Durasein and Mannington Commercial.

Forty-one teams submitted innovative design concepts for the 2024 competition. From there, 13 were selected to move forward to the second round, where ideas were fleshed out in robust, visually rich presentations that covered the challenges their concepts solve and the details of that solution.

In June, the jury met to review those semifinalist concepts, choosing four to advance to the final stage of the competition, which was held live during the keynote “Breaking Through Finale,” at the HCD Conference. (To see the nine semifinalists, click here.)

The finalists included:

The Decaf Hospital, submitted by SmithGroup
Invisible, submitted by Gresham Smith
Oasis, submitted by HGA
The Respira Model: From Housing for Health to Health for Housing, submitted by Perkins&Will

After the four finalist teams presented their concepts in a keynote session, audience members voted for the concept they found most innovative via live polling, with the winning SmithGroup team taking home the $10,000 prize.

Additional coverage of the winning and runner-up concepts is featured in the November/December issue of Healthcare Design magazine and on hcdmagazine.com.

For more information, contact Donna Hidalgo at [email protected] or 210-419-9017.

MEET THE JURY