Redesigning the Hospital Experience

Fall 2023
Academic: ARCH 7390
Professor Mikael Avery

Objective
This was my final project for my ARCH7390 seminar. The objective was to design a building on the corner of 38th and Market Streets at the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center campus in Philadelphia to improve the patient discharge process and promote the health of patients and members of the surrounding community. I worked in a group with two other students, and my contributions included developing the model of our design, creating plan diagrams, and providing input for the creation of the sections and renderings. This project was entirely digital.

Software Used
Rhinoceros3D
Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop
Lumion Rendering

Final Design Proposal

Our design proposal included two structures, as seen in the image to the right. The building on the right is a center designed for patients who have been discharged from the hospital and their families, and the building to the left is as a public community center targeting the surrounding neighborhoods. The discharge center is a four-story structure that features amenities and resources for patients and their families to use on their way out of the hospital as well as during future follow-up appointments. The public community center is designed to attract people from the surrounding area and encourage them to interact with the hospital campus to engage in health-promoting activities. One main objective of these structures is to make the hospital environment more welcoming, which inspired the shape and appearance of these structures.

Process Images
We went through many iterations of the final shape of our design. We wanted to create two buildings that mirrored each other and decided on a stacked structure. These show how we iterated from a very simple shape to a more refined and purposeful design.

Process Images and Plan Diagrams

We studied the walkways around the site and plotted out how people enter the space from the hospital or neighborhood by car or foot. This led us to create two structures with an interactive pathway in the middle, which would create natural points of entry from both the hospital and from outside of the campus. The walkway would attract people to the space and make the entrance more welcoming since the existing entrance lacked engagement and color.

Plan Diagrams
The images on the right show the second and third floor plans for each building. As seen in both plan diagrams, the exterior walls of each buidling are made of primarily curvilinear lines without many right angles. We chose this design to resemble designs seen in nature, which feature fractals, curves, and minimal straight, orthogonal lines. We also chose to mirror these designs on the interior of the space with most of the inside walls, dividers, and railings featuring curves rather than straight lines.

Final Design Proposal

Public Community Center
‍This building has a public fitness center and pool, a cafe with healthy eating options, and a greenhouse on top of the building. The facade of the building is designed to be interactive, inviting visitors to engage with the structure. The goal of this structure is to encourage members of the surrounding community to engage with the hospital campus even when healthy, helping people rethink the experience of being in a hospital.

Patient Discharge Center
‍This building has an Activities of Daily Living center that teaches patients how to continue their care at home, a healthy-eating cafe, a library and workspace, a teaching kitchen, and rooms with an on-call health provider for last-minute care. The goal of this structure is to streamline the patient discharge process, provide resources for patients before they leave the hospital, and serve as a place where patients return for follow-up appointments.