Design Professionals Follow the Physician's Precept:

Innovative strategies improve air quality inside health care facilities so that patients don't end up sicker than when they arrived
This course is no longer active
[ Page 5 of 6 ]  previous page Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 next page
From Architectural Record
Josephine Minutillo

Turning their attention inside, the designers relied on the Environmental Protection Agency's list of asthma triggers to determine which substances to avoid. While the list includes items such as cigarette smoke and mold, it also includes 17 chemical compounds that are common components in construction and building materials, which in addition to VOCs and formaldehyde, include styrene, isonates, and aerosols. "Wherever possible, we are going to avoid their use in the building so that the indoor environment doesn't trigger an asthmatic episode, or, in the long run, contribute to the eventual onset of asthma for someone," Syrett explains. "What goes into a building has a direct impact on the health and well-being of its occupants."

 

1. Bore holes, 1,500 feet deep
2.State change-storage
3. Heat pumps
4. Distribution system

Relying on a ground-source heat pump, Foundling's new facility is a combustion-free building (top). Chemical-free building materials and interior finishes were selected over products that may include asthma triggers. Foundling also has a nonwax-finish protocol for the floors, choosing polished concrete and linoleum (below).

Images courtesy Perkins+Will

 

 

Another trigger the architects hope to avoid is dust, both during construction and within the finished building. The building's design calls for minimal overhangs, ledges, and exposed piping so that there is less opportunity for dust to accumulate and become a respiratory irritant. In accordance with what is becoming standard practice at most health care facility construction sites, air locks and walk-off mats will be used during construction of Foundling. Additionally, ducts will be capped and sealed as work progresses so that dust doesn't settle inside and get spewed out once the mechanical system is fired up. That system uses a HEPA filter with a MERV rating of 14-among the highest available, and commonly employed in hospitals.

One thing Foundling does that most hospitals do not do is incorporate operable windows. While opening a window to let in the fresh air is usually a no-brainer for improving IAQ, in Foundling's case, the poor air quality outside led the architects to weigh this decision quite heavily. "In the end, we still think it's important for people to be able to open windows," Syrett says. "And we thought about the building in a longer trajectory. It is our hope that the point-source pollution will become less of a problem in the future, which is something to consider when you're designing for a 50-year building. One of the biggest issues with hospitals and other hard-core health care environments is sealing people in."

While some older hospitals have retained their operable windows, you would be hard-pressed to find new hospital buildings in the U.S. that feature them. "Health care providers worry about infection control above almost everything else," explains Walt Vernon, principal at Mazzetti & Associates. "There are documented instances of airborne transmission of pathogens from one space to another in buildings that use natural ventilation." But after becoming frustrated with the current paradigm of hospital design, Vernon, a cocoordinator for the  Green Guide for Health Care (available for download at www.gghc.org), began to research how natural ventilation and displacement-ventilation systems would affect IAQ in a health care setting.

Even though these systems are commonly used in hospitals outside the U.S., the practice here is to stick with what you know. "There's a lot of science behind the use of overhead mixing systems," adds Vernon. "We don't have the same kind of data today on displacement systems." But Vernon is trying to change that. He has teamed up with Oakland-based health care giant Kaiser Permanente to test displacement ventilation in one-bed hospital rooms. In displacement ventilation, cooler supply air is introduced at a low velocity at the floor level, displacing the warmer room air and creating a zone of fresh, cool air at the occupied level. Heated, contaminated air rises to the ceiling and is exhausted out. (The trend in hospitals is toward single-bed design, and it is believed that displacement ventilation will work more effectively in that scenario.)

 

[ Page 5 of 6 ]  previous page Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 next page
Originally published in Architectural Record
Originally published in August 2008

Notice

Academies