Project narrative: Good design should navigate constraints to uplift. Few fields have as many constraints as healthcare design and the balance between uplifting and functional is often sacrificed. At the LEED-Silver-certified Boston Children’s Brookline, all are welcomed in an environment as considered and special as them. The building’s holistic design, wayfinding, and graphics theme: “The Amazing You” seeks to inspire and validate the amazing capacities of all visitors, choreographing Instagrammable moments of levity amidst challenges of a medical visit. This required earnest listening and openness to iteration but enabled an empathetic, collaborative approach that anticipated the space’s many effects.
Project location: Brookline, Massachusetts
Firm name: isgenuity
Completion: 2021
Project type: Outpatient ambulatory care and medical office building
Project information: New construction
Size: 84,000 sf
Certifications: LEED silver
Client: Boston Children’s Hospital
Jury comments: This project was executed with a strong consideration of patient’s health indicators using evidence-based design solutions. Good design should navigate constraints to uplift. Using color and graphics for navigational wayfinding, the Center creates an environment that responds to both the user’s physical and emotional well-being. The design process engaged deeply with the concept of neurodiversity and the idea that perceptions of and reactions to physical space vary from person to person. Today’s children are their own decision makers; the design theme “The Amazing You” seeks to inspire and validate the amazing capacities of all visitors.
Images/Photographer(s): Robert Benson
LEED: The Green Engineer
Landscape Architect: Mikyoung Kim
General Contractor: Skanska
Interiors: isgenuity
Planning: Steffian Bradley Architects
Structural: McNamara Salvia
Mechanical: NV5
Electrical: NV5
Plumbing: R.W. Sullivan
Lighting: LAM Partners, Inc.
Acoustics: Acentech
Audio Visual: McCann Systems
Consultants: Core/Shell: Elkus Manfredi Architects; Life Safety: Jensen Hughes; Door Hardware: Robbie McCabe Consulting; MRI Shielding: PDC Facilities, Inc.
