Founded by Wayne Ruga, the Healthcare Facilities Symposium & Expo aims to create a multi-disciplinary environment that inspires the advancement of a better delivery of healthcare through the physical space. Competitors, clients, and colleagues come together as friends to collaborate, share research, hear fresh perspectives and participate in the ever-changing healthcare facility conversation.

Sessions focused on everything from innovative interior design — for example, modeling an infusion center on a first class airplane pod — to helping health care facilities build their brands. Design was a key focus throughout the event, with additional sessions on using architecture to optimize human resources, improve overseas facilities, learn interdisciplinary lessons, deliver enhanced psychiatric spaces and transform empty and abandoned buildings into modern ambulatory care centers. Additional sessions focused on trends such as human-centered design, strategic project phasing, the use of hybrid operating rooms and integrating retail into the patient experience.

Generative space was another primary focus of the event. The design methodology emphasizes creating supportive communities that allow individuals to flourish, providing things like shelter, food, employment, health and medical services, transportation, community engagement and support. This year’s Healthcare Facilities Symposium & Expo Pre-Conference Workshop featured an innovative Chicago-area facility that embodies the idea of generative space, the Center on Halsted and the Town Hall Apartments. The event included a panel discussion on the project with the design team members as well as a tour of the innovative facility.

Several other standout projects were also highlighted during the Symposium Distinction Awards, a design awards ceremony which honored user-centered, adaptive reuse, team and individual projects, as well as innovative and sustainable products. The Generative Space awards went to Edmonton, Canada-headquartered Stantec for its Bridgepoint project, San Francisco-headquartered Gensler for the Town Hall Apartments and Jessica Gutierrez-Rodriguez with the Texas Center for Infectious Disease in San Antonio received the Founder’s Award.

The three-day event, held Oct. 6-8 at Chicago’s Navy Pier, also featured an expo where companies like AcornVac, Assa Abloy, Cree Inc., HDR, Norix Furniture and Samsung Surfaces showcased their latest health care offerings and innovations. Additional symposium events included a learning lounge, technology pavilion, keynote addresses and multiple networking opportunities.

The 2016 event will take place in Orlando, Fla., Sept. 19-21.
 

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“The celebration today is a testament to the excellent job of the project team in delivering a top-notch facility ahead of schedule,” said Stephen Powell, consultant for project manager CBRE Healthcare at the ceremony. “For a project in northeast Ohio to be able to say we made it through this past winter two weeks ahead of schedule, and still beat cost targets, is a testament to the process and team we have in place.”

“It is so great to see the building take shape on our campus after all the months we spent planning it,” said Grace Wakulchik, chief operating officer at Akron Children’s Hospital. “Everything about the building is so well thought out and it is all about providing the best care to our patients and their families.”

One of the largest pediatric hospitals in the country, the Akron Children’s Hospital manages more than 700,000 patient visits annually. Upon completion, the $200 million, seven-story addition will house the hospital’s new emergency department, as well as an outpatient surgery center. A 100-bed neonatal intensive care unit and new labor units will also be added to provide additional care for those with high-risk pregnancies. Crews will connect the new addition to the existing facility February 2015, and the structure will welcome its first patients later that spring.

HSK Architects and Hasenstab Architects worked jointly to design the new facility, which is being constructed by the Boldt Company and Welty Building Company. The project team also includes civil engineer Environmental Design Group, MEP engineers CCRD and BWK, and structural engineer Thorson Baker. Mitchell and Dynamix Engineering will provide medical equipment and technology respectively.

To deliver the facility in an efficient manner, the design and construction team used an integrated project delivery method that involved the entire team from onset of the project. This method also allowed the building’s future users to provide input during the design process. Hospital staff and patient families were even invited to weigh in on potential furnishings for the new facility to select the most comfortable and functional options.

Two hundred past and current patients were also integrated into the addition’s design through the hospital’s Graffiti Project. This project honored patients, who were nominated by the hospital community, by spray-painting their names on the facility’s concrete slabs. As construction progresses, the names will be covered by the building’s exterior but will remain with the structure.

"As Akron Children’s grows to meet the current and future needs of children and their families, it was important to us to keep our patients at the heart of it all," said Gretchen Jones, director of principal giving for the Akron Children’s Hospital Foundation. "Our patients’ names will forever be a part of our new building and they will continue to inspire us as we serve them and other families."

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