A New Style of Holistic Healthcare

Primary care’s transition to purely patient-centered has taken a new form with this medical home focused on educating, monitoring and treating patients with the goal of long-lasting relationships between patients and physicians. THINK Whole Person Healthcare houses 24 primary care physicians and more than 500 other healthcare professionals including therapists, nutritionists, mental health professionals, health coaches and others.

The challenge was to design a prototype for a brand new healthcare environment that unites a mixed-use program and a patient-centered “home” to emphasize health and wellness and promote management of chronic, lifestyle-related diseases. The physical environment needed to support the shift from small practices to big groups of physicians using a common EHR and practicing in teams beside pharmacists and other health professionals.

As a prototype design that will be adapted to communities beyond the original facility, the simple cube form reflects this adaptability to relate to different sites and contexts, while the complex and intricate detail design promises a unique experience of the overall space. Patient spaces on floors three to five flex to account for diverse physician specialties within a standardized environment. The building was designed with nuanced layers of on-stage/off-stage navigation. Public spaces are concentrated on the main floor and within the central core of the facility. As you move further away from those public spaces, additional layers of privacy inform the experience.

Key design features of THINK include:

• To ensure the entire building reads holistically on the exterior, a custom ceramic frit pattern is applied on the unitized curtain wall system. Derived from microscopic human bone tissue overlay, the frit pattern not only unifies the vision and spandrel glass aesthetically, but also enhances the energy performance of the building.
• On the interior, a full-volume parabolic tapered atrium with “rose window” is designed to connect the different spaces and programmatic elements. The “rose window” structure, whose form is derived from simplified human tissue geometry, is made of warm, glue-laminated wood and vertically spans the entire central space, expressing the client’s unconventional and progressive vision of the healthcare environment.

Each exam suite not only has room for exams but also for family members to be comfortably present. Microphones embedded in the veiling enable physicians to consult with patients without simultaneously typing information—scribes record and transmit physician notes.