Login
Registered users
A design they grew out of the needs of practitioners and patients
Dedicated to researching, planning, and managing the care of young patients, the Hub for Clinical Collaboration grew out of a process of in-depth discussion between the design team and the practitioners who now work there. The facility adjoins the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) Research Institute. Located in Perelman Plaza and designed by Perkins&Will, this 18-story glass tower connects with the campus’s existing spaces. This means that support activities are integrated and that medical staff can move easily between the buildings. This in turn improves work environment quality for the benefit of staff, patients, and families.
For this reason, and to attract young researchers and doctors to the facility, the design grew out of a protracted research and engagement process to ensure that the architecture truly met the needs of the people who work every day in the hub and clinic – some two thousand people including doctors, researchers, and administrative staff. In other words, the architects set out to understand all the needs of all the different teams providing patient care and then translate them into architectural solutions that enhance the standard of that care.
The first step in identifying the needs of the staff in their daily work was to organize a series of workshops and meetings.Architects and engineers therefore got to experience first-hand the day-to-day work at CHOP, gaining a deep insight into its rhythms, and the needs of medical and other staff. This approach revealed, for example, that practitioners rarely spend much time in their offices, but are mainly treating patients, involved in discussions with colleagues, and moving from one department to another. The nature of their work was found to be anything but sedentary. For this reason, the architects optimized connections between the various buildings and areas, and created large common spaces, with adjoining private areas that practitioners can use for phone calls or private discussions.
Staff also expressed a need for more natural light and greater openness to outdoors. This led to incorporating large full-height windows into the final design. Creating a faceted effect, the sloping, protruding, and angled surfaces of the interiors – visible even from outside – are all functional, regulating the intensity of the natural light and the incidence of the sun’s rays.
Discussion and collaboration with staff led to a design that’s fine-tuned for performance, and that’s functional from the perspectives of both work and wellbeing. The flexibility of the hub’s spaces is a good example, with work environments, both large and small, designed to minimize distractions while also providing comfort and wellbeing. The design also anticipates the future work and organizational needs of the hub, such as greater or lesser amounts of remote work. Likewise, the architects took into account the possibility of future expansion, ensuring that CHOP can continue providing quality patient care.
Location: Philadelphia, USA
Architect: Perkins&Will
Completion: 2022
Client: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP)
Size: 565,000 SF
Photography by Halkin Mason Photography, courtesy of Perkins&Will
