Healthcare Design: The Heat Is On
We just wrapped a two-day conference on healthcare real estate late last week at the spectacular Aqua Tower. Some 225 attendees from 20 states heard hospital CEOs, urban planners, architects, and others talk about new healthcare real estate needs now that the Affordable Care Act is very likely here to stay. |
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| The challenge for healthcare architects: make workflow as efficient as possible while keeping all the participants on a project in sync. Chicago was well represented on the design panel, befitting the city’s prominence in architecture. Local designers included HOK’s Whitney Lang, ESD’s Randy Ehret, and Thornton Tomasetti’s Faz Ehsan. Joining the panel from another hub city of the healthcare industry—Nashville—was Skanska USA’s Andrew Quick. |
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Healthcare design is moving toward Building Information Modeling (BIM). You already know BIM involves digital representations of a facility, aiding decisions from design concept to finished facility. But out in the real world, the concept is still a little nebulous. The panel agreed that space shouldn’t be so specific in structure and layout that it can’t be adapted because there will be new technologies, and soon. Pictured: Whitney and Randy. |
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| There’s an appetite for sustainable development, but it’s tightly linked to ROI. Still, hospital directors, who tend to be long-term players (a hospital building might last as long as 50 years), see the value in provable green strategies—more perhaps than formal certification, though the industry is experiencing a renewed interest in Energy Star. Pictured: Faz and Andrew. | ||
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| CohnReznick's Jeff Cunningham and John van Stee of the Chicago office came to the event still celebrating Reznick Group's recent merger with JH Cohn. They also joined the suburbs-to-city business migration with their own move last week from a longtime suburban office in Skokie to the heart of Chicago at 200 S Wacker. | ||
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| Bisnow sponsor FEAA was out in force, allowing us to snap Colleen Nigro, Daniela Fitzgerald, Kari Jones, and Bill Rossi. Recent healthcare designs by FEAA: interior architecture of the 1.2M SF John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital, 13k SF Diamond Healthcare Clinic, and the 14.5k SF Saint Anthony Clinic. | ||
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| Many of our guests stayed directly across the street at the Fairmont where the Obamas and Bidens stayed election night last week, causing your publisher to ask one of his dumber questions of the concierge: "Which room did the President stay in?" "The Presidential Suite," the concierge replied politely. |
