Fostering Health Indoors: Design Strategies for Healthcare Environments  

Healthcare spaces are designed to promote healing, but indoor conditions such as noise and poor air quality present challenges to patient comfort, staff wellness, and overall building efficiency. This webinar examines how architects, engineers, and healthcare leaders can create healthier indoor environments in healthcare settings, focusing on acoustic performance, low-emitting materials, and strategies to improve air quality.

Participants will explore how thoughtful ceiling and material specifications contribute to quieter, safer, and more restorative spaces. Case studies will showcase integrated approaches and practical methods that balance patient-centered care with climate-conscious design, fostering healthcare environments that support resilience and recovery.

These innovative healthcare projects take a holistic look at sustainability, including full electrification of health campuses that begin to lower embodied and operational carbon footprints. Biophilic principles are expanded beyond just daylight and views to encompass all senses, while connections to ecological place ground patients and visitors during some of life’s most vulnerable moments.

Technologies like AI-navigated simulations drive efficiency and flexibility—cornerstones of sustainability—by reducing errors, minimizing travel distances, and optimizing staff workflow. The designs thoughtfully prioritize caregiver wellness, understanding that excellent patient care relies on the wellbeing of healthcare workers.

Fabian Kremkus, AIA, is a principal and healthcare architect at CO Architects. Inspired by the new LEED v5 standards, which prioritize decarbonization, occupant health and wellness, and biophilic principles, she will share examples of the firm’s projects that embrace the fundamental belief that human health is inextricably tied to global and environmental health.

These innovative healthcare projects take a holistic approach to sustainability, including the complete electrification of healthcare campuses, which helps lower both embodied and operational carbon footprints. Biophilic principles are expanded beyond just daylight and views to encompass all senses, while connections to ecological place ground patients and visitors during some of life’s most vulnerable moments.

Technologies like AI-navigated simulations drive efficiency and flexibility, cornerstones of sustainability, by reducing errors, minimizing travel distances, and optimizing staff workflow. The designs thoughtfully prioritize caregiver wellness, understanding that excellent patient care relies on the well-being of healthcare workers.

Steve Kopp, AIA, ACHA, Interior Design Leader at CannonDesign, will present a healthcare project that exemplifies how thoughtful interior design can balance indoor environmental quality with patient-centered care—creating spaces that promote comfort, safety, and well-being for patients and staff alike.

Little's Nicole Norris and Preston Gallagher will be presenting on Cape Fear Valley Medical Center Vertical Expansion. 

Cape Fear Valley Medical Center’s vertical expansion addresses an urgent regional need for increased inpatient capacity, achieved through exceptional planning, creativity, and technical excellence. As part of the healthcare system’s long-term master plan, this $110 million project adds 94 new beds to the existing Valley Pavilion, creating two new patient floors and introducing dual rooftop helipads —a crucial feature for trauma and emergency response in Fayetteville, NC. By building vertically instead of demolishing and rebuilding, the design team reduced the building’s carbon footprint, eliminated the need for additional land use, and kept the existing facility operational throughout construction – ensuring uninterrupted patient care.

Join us to explore how leading design firms are redefining healthcare environments through strategies that balance indoor environmental quality, patient-centered care, and sustainable performance. Following the presentations, a moderated Q&A session will provide an opportunity to discuss key insights and innovations from each project.

UCI Health - Irvine Ambulatory Care Center by CO Architects, Tom Bonner Photo

Designed by CO Architects and nearing completion, UCI Health-Irvine at University of California, Irvine, will be the country’s first all-electric medical campus. Decarbonization is one of several features designed to improve occupant health and wellness. 

Fabian Kremkus, AIA, is a design principal and healthcare team leader at Los Angeles-based CO Architects. He has worked in several typologies during a nearly 30-year career: hospitals, academic and research facilities, civic/cultural design, institutional interiors, secondary schools, corporate headquarters, and sports and entertainment complexes. Since joining CO Architects in 1999, Fabian has designed major projects throughout the country. He is currently leading the new UCI Health – Irvine Medical Campus project, a new Southern California healthcare facility for Providence, and pro-bono work for nonprofit Sail to Shelter. Fabian holds a Master of Architecture and a Pre-Diploma of Architecture from the University of Braunschweig, Germany.

Steve Kopp, AIA, ACHA, Vice President | Design Leader, CannonDesign, Steve has devoted his career to designing spaces that heal, comfort and enable people to live their healthiest, best lives. A medical planner and interior architect, he is widely recognized for his ability to uncover the intimate and often unarticulated needs of patients, families and care teams—and translate them into interior environments that play a direct role in the healing process. For Steve, his work is about more than design. It’s about creating environments that act as a canvas for the human experience. His work spans the gamut of healthcare facilities, from pediatric hospitals and outpatient clinics to buildings for health education and research. Regardless of project type, he brings the latest evidence-based research—and endless amounts of heart—to create interior environments that always ensure the best possible outcomes for all.

Nicole Norris, Architect, Little Architectural, is an architect in Little’s Healthcare Studio with over a decade of experience in medical planning and user-centered healthcare design. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte with a Master’s in Architecture and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, she is passionate about combining efficiency and design to create healing, restorative environments that improve outcomes for patients, families, and staff. Nicole has shared her expertise at national conferences, including the PDC, HFSE, and Planetree International, and is actively engaged in mentorship and professional development within the design community.

Preston Gallagher, Little Architectural, is a project architect passionate about creating healthy, healing interiors within healthcare environments. His curiosity about people and cultures, sparked by traveling the globe by age 18, fuels his drive to design spaces that enhance well-being and positively impact lives. Preston believes thoughtfully designed interiors can bring comfort, foster connection, and support recovery, giving patients and caregivers a true sense of place. He earned his Master’s in Architecture from Kansas State University.