Posts tagged ‘A Visual Reference to Evidence-Based Design’
Writing a Hospital Design Book – The Journey of Discovery
Writing “A Visual Reference to Evidence-Based Design” was a journey of discovery and learning for me. Typically when one writes a new book, one outlines the book in great detail and you know exactly where you want to go. You have a road map and that’s what you’re going to research and what you’re going to talk about. Well, I thought I knew what this book was going to be about in the beginning and, in fact, I thought it was going to be perhaps spiral bound as a notebook with lots of annotated photos depicting how research was applied to support the design of those facilities, whether individual rooms or entire nursing care units.
The book at that time and, in actuality, focuses on acute care, not outpatient, and specifically areas of direct patient care—places where patients spend their time—not lobbies or public spaces. And the reason I did this is because I had seen several recently completed hospitals that had great lobbies and then the design features abruptly ended. Except for the computers I saw, they were very bland, colorless spaces and it took me back to the 1970s, before Planetree. I was shocked that I could be seeing this today. I found this so distressing that I decided to write a manifesto about it. So the book started as a polemic around that issue and I sought out examples of projects that carried design features into patient care areas.
Motivation for Writing Jain Malkin’s Latest Hospital Design Book?
I was motivated to write my latest hospital design book, “A Visual Reference to Evidence-Based Design” after seeing three hospitals in a row that had been completed in the last couple of years and touted as the “ultimate in healing environments” and when I hear that, of course, my expectations are very high.
In all three cases when I personally toured the facilities, I was surprised to see that the design features and nice design amenities stopped in the lobby and, once I passed through the lobby, it was as if I were in a 1970s or 1980s hospital in that I saw a lot of white walls and a very institutional appearance. Except for the computers and monitors that were omnipresent, it was like stepping backwards in time.
Jain Malkin
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