Hospital design competition results in a surprise
Kaiser Permanente’s first ever hospital design challenge, Small Hospital, Big Idea, came to a surprise ending this week: a tie.
After an intense final two days of presentations by the three finalists – Aditazz, Gresham, Smith and Partners and Mazzetti Nash Lipsey Burch with Perkins+Will – the judges declared a tie between Aditazz and Mazzetti et al.
[See also: Three finalists chosen for hospital design competition.]
“When we went into this, we thought it’d be a piece of cake … There’s just going to be one stellar presentation that’s going to knock our socks off,” said John Kouletsis, Kaiser Permanente’s vice president of facilities planning and one of the contest judges.
“Over the two days (of finalist judging) we became increasingly convinced that these two teams were actually reflecting sort of the nature of healthcare,” Kouletsis continued. “It’s a very complex industry. It’s a very involved design process, thought process, and I think these two teams really so, so perfectly characterized the nature of the design process. We thought, you know what, they’re both bringing phenomenal knowledge, phenomenal experience to the table. We’ve got to figure out how do we do this?”
The Small Hospital, Big Design contest began 11 months ago with the idea of finding a small hospital design that would develop new ideas on how to deliver healthcare using the best in medical technology and facility design to improve patient care and experience while also being cost effective and environmentally conscious.
“We decided if we wanted to understand the hospital of the future we needed to first understand healthcare and … the future way we need to be providing healthcare to people so that then we could think about how this piece of the puzzle would best fit,” said Walt Vernon, principal of San Francisco-based engineering firm Mazzetti Nash Lipsey Burch. The firm partnered with the New York team of architectural firm Perkins+Will for the design competition. “We spent a lot of time talking to experts from around the country … to try to imagine what was healthcare going to look like and as a result of that what was hospital going to look like. It was one of the most stimulating, and I think, exciting things that I’ve ever been involved with.”
The three finalists were selected from a field of more than 100. Each finalist received from Kaiser Permanente $1 million to develop their plans. The winners are eligible to enter into a contract with Kaiser Permanente for a future small hospital building project.
The $3 million the health system spent on the finalists is less than it would have spent if it had gone a more traditional route, Kouletsis said, and the designs are created to incorporate elements that, over time, recapture all of the money spent on the competition.
According to a press release from Kaiser Permanente announcing the winners, the winning designs create spaces that inspire connection and collaboration, blur the boundaries between community and the traditional hospital setting, bring nature inside and present innovative engineering processes that ensure carbon neutrality and improve ecosystems, biodiversity and community health. (See our slideshow for images from the finalists’ designs.)
Kaiser Permanente’s next steps include digesting the designs and what they’ve learned from the competition process said Kouletsis. No timetable has been set for the construction of a hospital based on the designs, but if one is built, it could be within the next three to five years.
“It was much more than we ever thought it would be,” Kouletsis said. “I think we’re walking away thinking that this whole process, even if we were never to build anything and even if we never did pick a winner, we have learned so much about what all of this is, what this is all about, how we should be moving forward in terms of healthcare design.”
Follow HFN associate editor Stephanie Bouchard on Twitter @SBouchardHFN.
