Healthcare Design - November 2014 - 80

Movement. It's essential to
ergonomics, and it's key to innovation.
It's why BioFit partnered with a leading
Italian design firm to develop MVMT,
a new line of seating engineered to
be responsive to the full range
of continuous motion. MVMT
gives workers the ability to
move-and the power
to innovate.

www.biofit.com
800.597.0246
biofit@biofit.com

HCDmagazine.com 11.14

Layouts and adjacencies
Space planning, especially in inpatient units, can also
answer needs for future adaptability and flexibility.
For example, centralized staff spaces can expand or
contract, as needed, to support transitioning clinical
areas.
"The most successful design solutions plan soft
spaces, like offices, adjacent to capital-intensive
departments, such
as surgery, imaging,
lab, and pharmacy,"
says Greg Osecheck, a healthcare
principal for HGA
Architects and Engi-

Centralized staff spaces can
expand or contract, as needed,
to support transitioning
clinical areas.

neers (Sacramento,
Calif.). As such, the latter "hard spaces" can expand
into the surrounding soft spaces, as needed.
Locating clinical areas on the perimeter supports
easier expansion, too. "Placing clinical zones on the
outside walls allows clinical spaces to expand easily into
surface/ground space, onto a roof, or as part of a multistory horizontal expansion, without displacing or impacting an existing functional service," says Lora Schwartz,
principal consultant at CBRE Healthcare.
At the same time, Osechek cautions against landlocking clinical spaces on the interior. "Make sure there
is at least one, and preferably two or more, paths of
easy expansion into either soft space, exterior space,
or shelled space," he says. "For instance, placing the
pharmacy in the center of the facility near an elevator
core will ensure easy access from the pharmacy to
vertical transport, but placing the pharmacy next to the
hard elevator core on one side, imaging on the second
side, emergency department on the third side, and a
major mechanical space on the fourth side leaves no
option for the pharmacy to grow or flex over time."
Sharing a lesson she's learned, Jennifer Aliber, principal and lead healthcare planner for Shepley Bulfinch
(Boston), explains that while elaborate floor plans,
such as snowflake-shaped nursing units with the care
provider station in the center, may work well initially,
they tend to be very difficult to re-plan over time. With
an eye on the future, the industry is trending back to
old-school hospital design where spaces are set up in
a rectilinear fashion, thereby making future renovations
and additions much more straightforward.
Easy reconfiguration
The need for future adaptability is also driving the
growing use of reconfigurable casework and demountable walls in healthcare spaces. For example, for the
consolidation of two facilities and renovation of an
existing facility at Bluewater Health, reconfigurable
casework-in place of fixed millwork-was selected

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Healthcare Design - November 2014

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