We sat down with Codey to get an insight into her passion and approach to healthcare design.

What inspired you to join the industry?

The driving force that led me to embrace this industry was my dad’s influence. He was a passionate architect with a love of ‘making’. He loved his job of creating meaningful places, the comradery of working with a team and the physicality of the building process. Witnessing this love and dedication to his profession left an indelible mark on all his kids through dinner table conversations.

I love the diversity of our work, the ‘many hands’ aspects, and the boundless opportunities for creative problem-solving. The human aspects of our profession, working with diverse individuals and projects we design that impact lives, fill me with immense purpose and joy.

Now, at ArchTam as Technical Director and Health Sector Lead for Buildings and Places in Victoria and South Australia, I blend my passion for architecture and clinical experience to embed engineering to achieve wellness outcomes in health projects. I am endlessly inspired by the transformative power of our field and continue to cherish my dad’s legacy. I am committed to crafting spaces that push the boundaries of design and leave positive imprints on the lives of those they serve.

How does your work positively impact the clients and communities we serve?

I love working in the health sector and am inspired by the ability to blend evidence-based design into spaces that make people feel good about being in them. As designers and engineers, how we approach projects has a direct and measurable effect on the people who use our buildings.

I find immense satisfaction in designing for wellness and crafting environments that genuinely resonate with people’s wellbeing. Our work touches lives, nurtures healing and empowers communities. In my commitment to serving our clients and communities, I acknowledge the responsibility to deliver design excellence and integrate evidence-based salutogenic outcomes to foster positive experiences for all users. Collaborating closely with health services, I diligently seek to understand their unique objectives, championing engineering as a critical design stream in pursuit of wellbeing outcomes.

How will your new role change the way ArchTam delivers health projects?

As I step into this role, I see my appointment as a positive catalyst for improving how ArchTam delivers health projects. I think architects and engineers are trained to solve problems in different ways. The amalgamation of these different perspectives we bring to projects will foster more holistic solutions and achieve a broader range of outcomes — particularly from a humanistic, experiential perspective.

Buildings are not just a kit of parts that are built in a sequence — they are for people. Our approach will be rooted in co-designing outcomes with health services, stakeholders, end users and the community. By considering their wants, needs, dreams and visions, our projects will be better.

Taking on this role with ArchTam opens the door to building and fostering transformative relationships with our clients. It allows us to specialise in co-designed, evidence-based outcomes and leverage this to forge architectural partnerships to deliver thought-leading built outcomes. I believe my fluency in health planning and architectural language and my ability to understand the drivers from this perspective equips us with a unique advantage to deliver a different collaborative model by which we can optimise whole-of-project outcomes.

Our collective commitment to delivering outstanding results will ensure we deliver spaces that nourish and enrich the lives of those they serve.

What are the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for the industry?

As we face challenges in our industry, I believe the key to our success lies in designing first-class outcomes amidst an economically uncertain market. This means we need to demonstrate and articulate value for money in our projects. But for me, a well-designed building doesn’t cost more than a poorly designed one — it just means we need to be more considerate about how and where we spend money. Achieving great outcomes requires a holistic approach encompassing the early design setting, processes and methodology, together with client engagement. By carefully considering every aspect, we can deliver outcomes that are nothing short of fabulous, leaving a profound impact on all who experience them.

As we navigate the changing landscape, we cannot keep investing in new hospitals. We must seek innovative solutions to support contemporary models of care. Repurposing complex brownfield spaces offers immense opportunities to meet this challenge. Being experts in understanding and unpicking as-built conditions becomes essential, enabling us to discern what is feasible within the given opportunities and constraints.

I am excited about how our team will embrace creativity, collaboration, and adaptability to deliver exceptional solutions for our clients and communities.

What excites you about the future of the industry?

What excites me most about the future of our practice and industry is the commitment to co-design, First Nations engagement and evidence-based design. I love that buildings are being designed together with the voices of place and those who will ultimately end up using them. This approach grants a new dimension of nuance and achieves a more thoughtful outcome due to this engagement.

The sense of ‘ownership’ of these buildings is no longer the purview of a select few but rather a community, which is very exciting to be a part of. Being part of this shift in the industry is inspiring as our projects serve as a vehicle for inclusivity and collective empowerment.

Share a piece of career advice.

Architecture and engineering are a team sport. The buildings we deliver have been made by many hands working together. It is essential to recognise the contributions of everyone in the outcomes we achieve.

The post Designing wellness outcomes: Meet Codey Lyon appeared first on Blog.

Kim Loubser leads projects from inception to completion, including design, technical detailing, and specifications within the healthcare sector, and is experienced in delivering varying-sized new build and refurbishment healthcare projects, ranging from primary care to acute care facilities. As project architectural lead, she assists in effectively realizing a shared design vision based on ArchTam’s design expertise and the clients design brief. Kim is passionate about delivering quality and innovative building solutions aligned with the client’s vision.

Tell us about what inspired you to join the industry.

I’ve always appreciated beautiful spaces and buildings. I joined the industry as a way for me to utilize my artistic and problem-solving skills to create spaces and buildings that could impact the community at large. I studied architectural technology in Cape Town and moved to the United Kingdom shortly after completing my studies. I worked in various sectors in architecture, but working within the healthcare sector has been the most rewarding and is more aligned with my values.

My work on hospitals and health centres has inspired me the most, as it directly addresses socioeconomic issues in the communities it serves. The results of the projects I work on positively impact the wellbeing of the most vulnerable in society which is why I enjoy working within this sector. 

What is your favourite ArchTam project that you’ve worked on and why?

Some of the most memorable projects that I’ve worked on would be Goodman’s Fields and Wood Wharf Health Centres in London. These projects involved working with an end client who was focused on delivering a high-end project orientated around design and quality of spaces. 

Specific aspects that made working on these projects a rewarding professional experience included:

• Having a client who would not compromise on design or quality, assisted with achieving the design vision and delivering a best-in-class health centre in the region.
• Community collaboration – Involving members of the community in the design process and following through with their input so that they felt valued and would be more accepting of the final project delivered.
• Using ArchTam’s values-based principles of being customer focused and building stronger customer relationships, which resulted in follow up projects.
• Running this project on site was both a challenging and memorable experience as working within the constraints of an existing residential building resulted in me using an agile mindset and flexible work approach to enable rapid project delivery.

Close collaboration was required between the National Health Service Property Services (NHSPS), the developer and the local authority with an end vision of providing high-quality primary care healthcare services across the borough. 

The projects were successfully delivered as our design team was focused on collaboration and committed to providing an innovative design solution using the site’s constraints. The designs concentrate on reimagining spaces like waiting rooms that can often be overlooked. Far from being an afterthought, waiting rooms were central to our design and provided ample daylight and visual access to an external garden. The interior design philosophy used timber and natural palettes to create warm, welcoming environments that promoted mental wellbeing. The result is modern high-specification facilities that will transform healthcare services for the local communities and provide uplifting spaces for healthcare providers to work in. 

Tell us a story of how your work positively impacted the community.

As I work within the healthcare team, my work directly serves and impacts communities. In the case of the Goodman’s Fields Health Centre, it greatly expanded local access to healthcare.  

The centre enabled the NHS North East London Clinical Commissioning Group to deliver an extended range of primary care services to the Borough of Tower Hamlet’s patients and provide extra capacity and flexibility to meet increasing demand. Patient care and dialogue were at the forefront of the project, resulting in a flexible and adaptable design. The facility can be used for multiple functions such as general practitioners a wellbeing and health centre, and as a community centre. 

Our project resources also allowed us to support new models of healthcare. This included delivering a more efficient way for clinicians to see patients virtually as well as streamlining patient care through an enhanced digital platform, which provided the community with greater access to primary healthcare facilities.

Contributing to this project during the pandemic also instilled a sense of pride in me as I helped relieve pressure on the NHS. After the project was completed, I received feedback from a client team that when they entered the healthcare space, they felt the aesthetics and environment promoted a better mental state of mind, which is what we strive for with our designs.

Share a piece of career advice 

Give every project you work on the same level of commitment, regardless of the nature or size of the project. 

Be curious, and don’t be afraid to ask questions, as it helps to generate better solutions to problems. 

The post People Spotlight: Meet Kim Loubser appeared first on Blog.

As ArchTam’s healthcare lead for North of England, Chris is responsible for developing business and client relationships, positioning for strategic pursuits, being a focal point for clients and design partners, developing sector plans with the UK&I leader, as well as managing project delivery.

Tell us about what inspired you to join the industry

My introduction into mechanical engineering came from early careers guidance, where I was introduced to the role of a building services engineer and how they can influence the built environment. This includes designing systems that provide a safe and comfortable environment, working closely with the architect to influence and optimise the building envelope and implement sustainable engineering strategies to reduce lifecycle energy consumption.

I entered the industry through an employer sponsorship programme, which allowed me to attend university while working in a full-time role. I trained as a mechanical engineer, working alongside electrical and public health colleagues within the building services team.

This introduction provided me with the ability to apply my learning on complex projects daily, which was invaluable and enabled me to use my knowledge of complicated engineering subjects.

I have always been passionate about working on complex building and infrastructure projects and introducing energy and low carbon solutions to ensure that they operate sustainably.

Throughout my career, I have actively pursued employers that share my passions and can provide me with this experience. When I saw the career opportunity at ArchTam, I was keen to join the company, which would provide me with the experience and challenges I craved and help me to develop the next chapter of my career journey.

What is your favorite ArchTam project that you’ve worked on and why?

Working within the healthcare team at ArchTam has allowed me to work on many rewarding projects. We have recently been involved in delivering a new state-of-the-art Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, a visually striking specialist cancer treatment facility in Liverpool, UK.

My role in this project was leading the delivery of the building services engineering, which included developing complex design strategies, coordinating specialist services, and developing low-carbon design strategies to ensure that the building could operate as efficiently as possible.

Central to this design concept is a glazed curtain walling system that provides patient areas with a strong connection to the external environment and provides views across the city. In collaboration with the architect, a high-performance walling system was developed that maximises natural lighting and reduces glare without compromising patient comfort.

Cancer patients can be sensitive to light and temperature—patients may overheat or experience photophobia as a reaction to their treatments. Patients can also experience sensitivity to room air movement through lower body mass. To assess patient visual and thermal comfort, we undertook dynamic simulations to ensure that the specification of the façade systems was balanced against operational requirements, energy performance, and ability to provide a comfortable patient environment.

The success of this project is due to the team of dedicated ArchTam professionals that worked hard to ensure the design solutions we developed fully met the client’s specific operational requirements.

The hard work and efforts of the ArchTam team helped to develop excellent relationships with the client, design team and construction partners. Our collective efforts ensured that the design team provided the client with a fantastic award-winning building that transforms the way cancer services are provided to the Liverpool and Merseyside regions.

Tell us a story of how your work positively impacted the community.

I am fortunate to see the positive impacts our hard work and efforts can provide to a community or region—and our work in Liverpool and the surrounding Merseyside region is a prime example. Merseyside is one of the UK’s most deprived counties, which can lead to health issues within the population.

For example, cancer rates within Merseyside are seven percent higher than the national average. This includes extremely high rates of lung, trachea, and bronchus cancers, 59 percent higher than the national average, and although rare, incidence rates of liver cancer are 75 percent higher than national average.

The clients’ existing cancer facilities were located on the Wirral peninsula. The project case for change identified they were isolated from modern medical and surgical practices. The new facility would be linked to the new Royal Liverpool University Hospital development to provide greater linkage to research (bench to bedside) and to the patient’s journey (diagnosis to discharge), with services located on the same site, with the same team.

Since opening, the cancer centre has been offering pioneering clinical trials and care for more complex and seriously unwell patients, which could not have been provided without the linkage to the new Royal Liverpool University Hospital. Patients are now benefiting from clinical trials that are still at their very earliest stages including Phase 1 or ‘first-in-human’ trials.

In 2022, a Merseyside man became the first in the UK to receive a new cancer vaccine that was tailor-made to his own personal DNA and designed to help his immune system ward off head and neck cancer permanently. This groundbreaking treatment would not have been possible without the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre.

I am extremely proud to have been involved in the delivery of both the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre and the Royal Liverpool University Hospital and contributing to new social infrastructure for the area.

These state-of-the-art facilities are treating patients and undertaking state-of-the-art research that is starting to tackle these regional inequalities.

Share a piece of career advice

You will never know where your career will take you. Embrace the challenges that your career will bring.

ArchTam provides great opportunities to all employees across career levels. The support, resources and training available can help employees to pursue alternative fields of interests and take on new and diverse challenges.

The post People Spotlight: Meet Chris Taylor appeared first on Blog.

By providing supervised management-level experience and training, Jackson was able to support the growth of local small businesses and positively impact the careers of team members assigned to Jackson projects. Serving as Jackson’s program management consultant on the US$1.8 billion Miracle-Building Bond Program, ArchTam and subconsultant partner firm Creativision MEDIA, Inc. worked alongside Jackson executive leadership staff to help develop and administer their mentor-protégé development program.

Created in 2015 at the start of the Miracle-Building Bond Program, the mentor-protégé program was the first of its kind in that there were no previous large healthcare capital improvement initiatives with a formal mentor-protégé program. The program’s goal was to stimulate growth for the small firms by providing them with the skills to effectively take on healthcare construction projects, ultimately creating a positive long-term ripple effect throughout the Miami-Dade community and beyond.

Perfect pairs

Seven protégé firms participated in the mentor-protégé program, all of which were minority-owned, women-owned or minority women-owned. The program paired large construction management at-risk firms with these local small businesses. ArchTam and Charesse Chester of Creativision MEDIA helped Jackson execute the curriculum development and learning process, which included establishing expectations for participants. Each of the protégé participants were required to demonstrate their knowledge in 28 categories encompassed within three primary learning concepts:

1) pre-construction phase healthcare construction industry planning;

2) construction phase healthcare construction including management and delivery functions performed on capital development projects;

3) related business processes and protocols.

Based on the leadership team’s experience with oversight of the mentor-protégé program, the most important characteristic in a successful mentor for a program like this is that they have the heart and mind of a teacher and are committed to their role as a trusted guide throughout the process. In addition, they must be dedicated to establishing a solid relationship with their protégé. In turn, protégés must demonstrate a willingness to learn.

To ensure protégé firms were achieving learning milestones, they were asked to grade themselves throughout the program to communicate what and how effectively they were learning. This gave their mentors and the leadership team an idea of where learning deficiencies existed, and how to bridge those learning gaps.

Positive community impacts

The Jackson Health System’s mentor-protégé program represented a unique opportunity to stimulate significant growth in local SBE-C firms, in turn creating a positive impact in the Miami-Dade County community. Out of an average of about 750 certified SBE-C firms in Miami-Dade County in recent years, typically two per year graduate out of that certification. However, two of the seven protégé firms in this mentor-protégé program achieved such growth by the completion of the Miracle-Building Bond Program, which directly speaks to the mentor-protégé program’s effectiveness and lasting impact on the community.

Protégé firms that successfully completed the program have subsequently teamed with mentor firms to win additional work outside of the Bond Program, or even on their own as prime contractors. This is not only a win for the protégé firms, but also for the mentor firms — they now have a larger pool of local businesses they can partner with in seeking future work. Jackson Health greatly benefitted as well, since the pool of skilled healthcare construction contractors in South Florida increased, creating an increased workforce supply chain for projects that occurred during the Bond Program, and other future Jackson Health System projects.

There were individual victories as well — one protégé employee was gradually assigned more responsibilities throughout their company’s involvement in the Bond Program, and he was ultimately promoted to assistant superintendent.

The Jackson Health System/ArchTam partnership to deliver the Miracle-Building Bond Program — and create the successful mentor-protégé program — fulfilled ArchTam’s and our client’s goals of creating meaningful and long-lasting positive impacts in the communities we serve, while also supporting opportunities for SBEs to grow.

The post A case study in strengthening supplier diversity through a successful mentor-protégé program appeared first on Blog.

The Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine (VTCSOM) and the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute (FBRI) in Roanoke, Virginia, are two institutions designed by ArchTam that have incorporated key principles of collaborative learning, community engagement, and equity, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) values within the building design to enhance the typical student experience.

Designing a collaborative learning space at VTCSOM

Students who make the commitment to accept the academic rigors of medical school have intense and unique demands on their lives and learning experiences. These challenges must be addressed in novel ways as they train to become esteemed stewards of healthcare within our communities.

The design of the educational spaces in the VTCSOM is directly linked to the school’s teaching mission, which is based on small group learning and a curriculum which focuses on four domains: basic science, clinical science, research, and health systems science and interprofessional practice. The school’s unique design houses lecture and lab spaces, but most importantly, numerous smaller collaborative team rooms that maximize self-directed and experiential learning. A recent report from the Association of Public Land-grant Universities (APLU) found that this type of experiential learning is and will continue to be vital to student success.  At VTCSOM, smaller teams are a hallmark of the program, providing a critical component of student learning that allows students to analyze and evaluate patient cases, while colleagues and instructors continually assess student performance.  In addition, smaller group sessions are beneficial in fostering a more inclusive and engaged learning experience. This team-based approach to academics also translates to actual medical practice where many of today’s specialties rely on team interaction. Anecdotally, students often comment that the smaller class size is unique among medical schools and allows instructors to become invested in their academic success.

This carefully designed learning environment has directly contributed to the school’s extremely high match rate between students and their residencies of choice, a rate which is 99 percent for all eight of its graduating classes.

Engaging through art

The atrium is one of the many ways the building itself fosters engagement among the students, faculty and the surrounding community, and is a driving philosophy of the medical school.

Designed specifically to exhibit local and rotating art installations, the atrium allows artwork to be easily transported in and out of the building. This design feature has given birth to a unique Creativity in Health Education program that showcases curated pieces from members of the thriving local art scene in the New River and Roanoke River Valleys. As a key design component of the program, the atrium not only provides exhibit space for local artists but also a place for underrepresented voices throughout the community, a testament to the institution’s commitment to diversity.

The atrium is also emblematic of the WELL Building Standard, the first performance-based rating system to focus exclusively on measuring, certifying and monitoring features of the built environment that impact human health and wellness. One of the tenets of the WELL Building Standard is Beauty and Mindful Design that work to create “a beautiful and meaningful space in which design aesthetics are expressly considered have a positive impact on occupant morale and mood.”

The art space is used extensively and is intensely supported by the administration including Dr. David Trinkle, associate dean of community and culture. “Art can enhance a person’s adaption to illness as well as promote recovery,” he said. “We hope that the programs and shows that we feature at our school reinforce a holistic, patient-centered approach to healthcare that will benefit the students as well as the community as a whole.”

In 2013 Jane Lilian Vance, an acclaimed artist in Blacksburg, Virginia, was chosen as VTCSOM’s first artist-in-residence. During her residency, she painted in the hospital setting for three months, creating a series of paintings called the Trinity of Healing Hands, and her photo-realistic paintings became an integral part of the medical student’s curriculum.

Art has continued to be a centerpiece of the medical school’s outreach program. When the coronavirus outbreak occurred, the Creativity in Health Education program showcased an exhibit entitled “Hey There, How Was Your Pandemic?” The exhibit explored explore how some of the community’s local and regional artists channeled their creativity into artfully expressing the challenges of living through 2020.

FBRI at VTC ushers in a second decade of designing for the student experience

More recently, the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute (FBRI) at Virginia Tech Carilion formally opened on Oct.12, 2021, and is at the forefront of design that enhances the student experience while also promoting sustainability.

The LEED Silver-certified building boasts state-of-the-art sustainability features, including a green roof meadow garden that prevents flooding. Rainwater captured on the roof is recycled and reused, cutting the facility’s water consumption by two-thirds. The rainwater capture system is concealed beneath a paver system that creates a very useful exterior public space adjacent to the main lobby. This exterior public space is linked to the lobby by a two-sided fireplace that can be appreciated from both the interior lobby space and the terrace. Students and faculty can also revel in the flowers and plantings on the roof top garden in addition to the wildlife the flora attracts throughout the day.  This in turn enhances emotional and psychological health through a biophilic connection with the natural world. 

The lobby of the $90 million, 139,000 square-foot expansion is purposefully designed to promote strategic “collisions” and conversation, fostering cross-pollination of ideas, and indeed, this is a cornerstone of the design philosophy at FBRI.

The expansion gives students access to state-of-the-art biomedical research laboratories, high-end instrumentation and core facilities. The expansion also houses the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine Animal Cancer Care and Research Center. Designing the building to house a veterinary research and clinical care center not only allows for substantial translational research to occur between human and animal medicine, but also fosters the relationships between student researchers in vastly different fields such as cardiovascular disease, infectious disease, cancer and neurorehabilitation.

The state-of-the-art research facilities at FBRI also allow ample opportunities for undergraduate, medical and graduate students to engage in novel research in the biomedical field.

A goal of the curriculum is to develop scientist physicians and to that end, immerses all medical students in the language, culture and practice of research.

To cultivate the practice of research, the library is uniquely designed to support data analysis. There are no permanent bookshelves onsite. Students and researchers conduct information gathering online through an inter-university shared system that delivers books to the library if a hard copy is requested. Otherwise, students and researchers connect with materials online. Instead of holding books, the cutting-edge space accommodates the Data Visualization and Fusion Labs. Here, researchers and students receive assistance from data analytics support staff to translate the immense volumes of data into graphic and relatable material for lay, medical and academic audiences.

The research institute’s faculty currently provides training and mentorship to 130 Virginia Tech graduate and medical students who are conducting groundbreaking research.

As higher education increasingly needs to address the various dimensions of wellness of whole student development, designing spaces for learning will need to incorporate holistic practices that are grounded in collaborative, community-focused strategies for not only learning, but also living as part of the greater community.

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Access to healthcare is the foundation of helping students achieve a balance between mind and body. On-campus ambulatory clinics are essential spaces where students can get the support the need, both mentally and physically. Here are three ways college campuses can support students by promoting equity, advancing career opportunities, and improving mental health and wellness through the adoption of campus ambulatory clinics.

Promoting Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
Campuses must regularly redefine their Student Services programs as the needs of their students are perpetually evolving. Historically, this has meant academic counseling and tutoring, advisory, financial aid and career services. However, over the past decade, the definition has broadened to include additional services for  specific student needs including accessibility for disabled students, unique situations such as migratory farm worker students, the broad range of first generation college student needs, and the ever expanding minority student populations including Asian/Pacific Islanders, LatinX, LGBTQ students and others.  The emphasis in each case is to increase graduation rates while decreasing time to degree completion. This broadened scope of a Student Success Center more effectively incorporates these diverse range of backgrounds and needs. It connects support groups that have specialized skills to help students learn strategies for success in the academic realm and ultimately will support them in their careers. As designers, architects and planners, we work with campuses to analyze their program offerings in pre-design or feasibility study phases. We understand best practices and can guide universities to being better equipped to address equity and inclusivity in part through campus clinics. This work helps ensure success in academic achievement to the broadest possible definition of the “student body.”

Advancing Student Career Opportunities
Designing and running a campus clinic is not often included in campus operations, so universities frequently turn to trusted partners to help develop these essential spaces. These partnerships create opportunities for students by creating important connections between the academy and industry.  This connection is mutually beneficial, expanding the clinical provider’s market share while generating a new revenue stream for the campus. From our experience in the healthcare industry, we help campuses explore the range of industry partners and support ways that these outside providers can deliver quality care while also conducting job training for students that are aligned with future health professions.  

When allied health students work in these clinics, they receive valuable, on-the-job training for their careers. At the same time, the lower wages for student caregivers allow industry providers to operate the clinics in a more cost-effective way. When students work with medical professionals and their student colleagues in other disciplines, they also develop important team-building skills in real-life situations that will be integral in their careers.

Improving Mental Health and Wellness
The pursuit of academic excellence can create high levels of stress for any student, especially students without an established network of support among family, friends, and trusted mentors. These campus clinics can also provide mental health services for the student body as part of their offering. For this reason, their design requires sensitivity in planning to create and maintain privacy, discretion, and ease of access.

When we think about program adjacencies, academic counseling sessions can align with mental health screenings, and vice versa.  Referrals can be made discretely in a private setting with immediate access to care. To further increase student access to care, discrete entries with covered outdoor circulation and internal visual separation for the rooms that are designated to mental health services can maintain the privacy of all students seeking help. This design creates ease as it significantly diminishes the potential of students being exposed to suffering the stigma that sometimes is associated with these types of services.

At the intersection of student success and public health, campus clinics play a critical role in supporting the balance of mind and body. They also help universities to address inequity and promote inclusion for all students and the neighborhoods around these college campuses. When planned thoughtfully, the location – building or district – of campus clinics can promote accessibility, address multifaceted issues and advance wellbeing. When these critical social infrastructure components are integrated into shared spaces, all students can thrive.  

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Daniel DiMarco, associate principal, B+P, is a leader in the higher education and healthcare market sectors and is based in ArchTam’s Roanoke office in Virginia. He has more than 25 years of comprehensive design experience for leading higher education and healthcare facilities, including public, private and government clients. Projects also include higher education spaces related to translational medical research and schools of medicine.

Design inspiration

I chose the design profession because it offered the opportunity to use a variety of interests I have had from my earliest years to engage the world in a meaningful way. This includes creativity, math, science and history combined to find solutions to today’s challenges.

Passion for places of learning

Having spent many years in higher education spaces as a student between my undergraduate and graduate degrees, I have a deep appreciation for places of learning. Higher education spaces are evolving with approaches toward pedagogy being challenged by economic and technological pressures. As a designer, I have the ability to work with our clients to perceive solutions that fit their current needs as well as provide them with degrees of flexibility in design that will adapt to tomorrow’s approach toward learning.

Most rewarding project

While working at ArchTam here in Roanoke, Virginia, I have been fortunate to be the lead architect on the Riverside Center, now referred to as the Virginia Tech Carilion Health Sciences and Technology Campus (Campus and Facilities | Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC | Virginia Tech). ArchTam had just completed the master plan for this campus when I first joined in 2004. I was able to work with the client on developing the design for a 100,000-square-foot medical office building that also includes a range of higher education and research spaces, a 220,000-square-foot outpatient medical facility that is part of the emerging academic medical center and includes resident space and conference areas, the new 154,000-square-foot Virginia Tech Carilion (VTC) School of Medicine and Research Institute, a four-year medical school, and recently, the new VTC Fralin Biomedical Research Institute that includes higher education spaces, research areas and clinical services related to veterinary care and translational medical research.

This new campus has become an academic medical center and a nucleus of transformation. It started out as a brownfield site and became a robust center of higher education, translational medical research and clinical care. This campus is a regional hub for care and is becoming noticed on a global scale for the discoveries that are being accomplished in buildings we designed.

Positive impact of design

Design has the power to improve people’s lives in a variety of ways which, in turn, have positive effects on the environment. In higher education settings, the students can grow and mature in ways that not only affect their own lives, but have ripple effects on others through positive interaction and engagement.

A quote from Winston Churchill in 1943 — “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us” — not only relates to our process in the design of buildings, but how the actual built form has transformation effects on those that inhabit the spaces that are part of the project. This quote has resonated with me throughout my career.

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ArchTam’s partnership with Enviah, a Grand Rapids-based, woman-owned business, has been fostered through a deep rooted and keen understanding of operational system performance models and the complex systems and structures required for this type of project.

Using their evidence led three-dimensional process – Discover, Design and Do – Enviah collaborated with HFMH in the pre-planning stage. The approach was centered around a thorough investigation and understanding of the Henry Ford Macomb Hospital’s existing operational model and how the new building could transform their operations to achieve optimal outcomes. Results were quantified through system measures of efficiencies, including optimal staff productivity as they care for patients, staff engagement and workplace pride, and increased patient satisfaction through a defined experience of care.

“Enviah’s operational focus mirrors our thinking that great healthcare design should be aligned to simplify and organize business operations and then tailored to improve the practitioner and patient experience. It is an absolute honor working with Dr. MacAllister and her teams to help solve our clients’ complex problems and deliver projects that will serve local communities for years to come.” – G. Jerry Attia, ArchTam Michigan’s Vice President and Managing Principal

ArchTam quickly moved forward with incorporating the operational model into a patient floor plan. Our planning and design architects embraced the operational mapping as a strategy for designing a cost-effective, positive care experience, and space that delivered quality, safety and inspiration for staff and patients alike. As our work on the project progressed, Enviah’s proprietary Syntax Mapping System validated that the planning resulted in lower numbers of steps for caregivers, increased visibility on the patients and more intuitive wayfinding for visitors.

A paper doll session at Henry Ford Macomb Hospital

We were pleased to learn that HFMH leadership found that Enviah’s future-focused thinking and research has led to improvements in their approach to the delivery of services and operations.

“ArchTam’s team approaches design from the core of the business operation and cares deeply about the significant investment the client makes when creating new spaces for their businesses. By combining ArchTam’s healthcare design expertise with our operational model and tactical applications and design solutions, our approach not only fully conceives how the building will operate in the future, but also incorporates a real sense of place that complements the local community culture.” – Lorissa MacAllister, PhD, AIA, Enviah’s Founder and President

Soon after completing the pre-planning phase on the HFMH project, and due to the unprecedented challenges healthcare systems faced in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Enviah and ArchTam teamed up once more to collaborate on an alternate care facility in Memphis, Tenn.’s former Commercial Appeal building.

The established rapport and technical expertise of the team allowed us to jumpstart our response to the planned 28-day designbuild of a 403-bed COVID-19 response facility in support of a FEMA mission. Enviah created a process map that responded to the staff and patient care workflow and ArchTam married the process map with the initial design plans. Equipped with process mapping and plans, our team collaborated with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and various Tennessee medical professionals for the project.

Our teamed efforts have been most impactful to the communities served, both in Michigan and Memphis. ArchTam and Enviah understand the importance of our contributions to population health through the built environment. When we work together to address the operational and business needs of our clients and then deliver a project that supports and enhances the care of people in the community, our success is measured in contributing to improved healthcare outcomes.

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By reimagining next-generation learning environments — including team-based instruction and simulation, and student collaboration space — we’re providing students with innovative learning opportunities to support interdisciplinary healthcare teams.

Trends driving learning environments in health science

While embracing the latest in medical education technology, students want to use cutting-edge virtual anatomy systems, but are also eager for more classic, hands-on learning opportunities with cadavers. When aiming to provide students with the best medical education, schools will focus on providing students with multiple learning modalities.

A good example of this is the integration of a virtual anatomy curriculum, coupled with hands-on anatomy/dissection experiences. Both experiences help build an integrated understanding of how to work with digital and physical models.

Another significant shift in health science education is in the medical library. The medical library of yesterday, with extensive stacks of books and reference material, is obsolete. We’re now seeing more universities replacing these resources with informal study, team and collaboration spaces, coupled with information resource advisors to assist with student research.

Medical simulation is a key aspect of health science education and one of the key aspects of interprofessional education. At Lakeland Community College, Ohio, we’re using state-of-the-art technology to simulate clinical environments. Based on the model of a functioning hospital — from corridors to exam rooms — we’ve designed the space to mimic real-life hospital spaces.

Everyone learns differently, so we focus on providing students with access to a variety of learning spaces, ranging from individual study space, problem-based learning rooms, active learning areas and lecture halls. Tying all of these spaces together and encouraging students to collaborate and work together enables them to have a team-based approach, which is vital in today’s healthcare profession.

At the Carilion School of Medicine and Research Institute, Virginia, we’ve designed a team-based, patient-centered learning environment. This design allows students to teach each other within a Patient Centered Learning (PCL) model, supporting collaboration and interaction, which are key components to success in medical school.

In addition to providing varying types of learning spaces for health science students, providing sophisticated research environments can inspire students to enter the world of biomedical research opportunities. Coupling academic space with research space provides students with the opportunity to engage in research exploration, exploring future career pathways. Having research space right next door encourages students to be curious and inquire about the different types of research opportunities that they may choose to explore.

The ArchTam Approach

ArchTam is a multidisciplinary design practice that integrates all aspects of planning and design, for the built environment. Our integrated team approach brings an elevated and more complete perspective to the clients we work with. We ensure that our cross-disciplinary approach to solving problems, is a key aspect to the buildings and places that we design. Fostering team-based learning, in all types of spaces, including campus quads, landscape gardens, dormitories, student unions, sports facilities, performing arts complexes, and academic and research facilities. We understand how teams work and how to leverage communication and collaboration across multiple skill sets. This core understanding of how we work supports our clients’ goals to create spaces where teams can excel. Our iterative and collaborative design practice helps institutions create human-centered buildings and places that help foster innovation for the next generation, and generations to come.

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Longevity and fertility
Dr. George Leeson, one of our keynote speakers and director of the Institute of Population Ageing at Oxford, reviewed the demographic transitions that affect populations worldwide, in particular declining fertility and increasing longevity. We are currently adding 2.5 years to our lifespans every decade; the 21^st century might be the last period of relative youth. On the other hand, we are constantly redefining the concept of what it means to be ‘old’ and reconsidering what is a pensionable age. We are entering an age of pluripotentiality; older populations are increasingly productive and capable compared to their cohorts in previous generations.

Urban realm
Glenn Howells, founder of Glenn Howells Architects, led a thoughtful panel focused on implications for the urban realm and how various industries react and adapt to meet changing demands. The most promising solutions are cross-disciplinary and cross-generational. We are increasingly considering the potential risks of robotics and artificial intelligence. Related developments may be driven by Millennials, but it will be older populations that nudge greater adoption of AI-enabled technology, including driverless cars and intelligent appliances and prosthetics.

New approaches
A nursery school and a retirement home are collaborating on innovative programming that combines childhood education with later living residents. The youngest children and the oldest residents learn from each other in fascinating ways. Judith Ish-Horowicz, the principal of Apples and Honey Nightingale Nursery, Alastair Addison, director of activities at Nightingale Hammerson, and Fay Garcia, a 91-year old pensioner at Nightingale Hammerson, spoke of the quality of the community and the ‘butterfly moments’ when serendipitous occurrences made the place extraordinary. These programs are also opportunities for trialling, researching and measuring emerging programs.

Housing with care
Richard Meier, a partner at Argent and chair of the ULI Residential Council, led a productive panel that explored the emerging typologies of so-called retirement housing. “Housing with care” encompasses residential types that offer a range of assisted care, hospitality offerings, value and tenure. There is perhaps no other real estate typology where the occupant needs change so dynamically. Perhaps like any single-demographic asset class, there continue to be poor associations and stigma attached to solutions that are uniquely intended for older people. Perhaps one of the most interesting developments is the increased interest in inter-generational living. These examples define new and surprising aspirations – the chance for different age groups to learn from each other and benefit economically. Aligning interests is the way forward. There are new delivery models for housing with care, including co-living and build-to-rent.

Workplace
James Franks from Gensler discussed implications of older generations in the workplace. For the first time in history, four generations are active in the workplace. The experienced aging worker is an increasingly attractive demographic, and James noted that even now, 11 percent of the workforce will be productive well into their 80s. The rise of the sharing economy, enabled by technology, will create environments that will help these workers get what everyone else also seeks in the workplace: purpose, flexibility, community and convenience. There are emerging co-working developments that are specifically catering to an older range of workers, and these will ultimately create a broader, better workplace for everyone.

Co-housing
Loneliness is a health risk factor for all ages, equivalent in impact to living with diabetes. Nick Henley, a founder of CoHabitas, has developed an online service that helps people aged 35 and over find like-minded people for house sharing. The aging population increasingly seeks to downsize to increase access to amenities and improve standards of living. Co-housing and co-living represent new aspirations as well as a wider understanding of potential financial, health and social benefits related to sharing assets. House sharing is also presenting itself as a solution that addresses wider social issues, including increasing the stock of housing for the wider population.

Demographics
Our other keynote speaker, Amlan Roy, senior managing director at State Street Global Advisors, reviewed the economic impacts of an aging demographic. He emphasised that the twin characteristics of declining fertility and increasing longevity affect emerging economies and Asian countries in particular at the moment. High growth and high costs associated with aging populations will have profound implications for national debts, investment priorities and urban patterns. Amlan outlined asset classes that would benefit from an aging population. To adapt to the changing context of aging, he also advocated abolishing mandatory retirement ages, closing gender gaps, rethinking immigration policies and outsourcing non-core jobs.

Mobility
Hugh Roberts, chair of the ULI Infrastructure Council, led a panel that explored land use implications related to mobility aids of particular interest for older citizens such as Uber, smart card ticketing and driverless cars. Many of these advances promise to reduce road and parking requirements – major land takes in cities. The panel noted that many of the mobility promises cause ‘wow-fatigue’. There is a gap between ‘should’ and ‘could’; full benefits of level-five vehicular autonomy are still many years off, for example. Some of the promises of driverless cars, like eliminating the number of vehicles on roads, may not be fully embraced by vehicle manufacturers and fleet operators – these groups sell consumption and are motivated by inducing rather than reducing demand for mobility.

Capital markets
Rob Martin, research director at Legal & General IM Real Assets, led a panel of investors, lenders and policy makers that reviewed different revenue models, risks and realities of housing with care. They observed the rise of the rental sector but noted that in the UK it lags behind other countries, especially the US. They discussed the pros and cons of various charging models, for example sinking fees vs. ‘event fee’ (equity release when exiting the development). But even with the rise of high-value products, co-living, and emerging rental models, there will still be challenges when serving a market (average age 78 years) that is still hard-wired for single home ownership.

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