Products That Power Holistic Outcomes

With a map of goals provided by EBD, the design professional can make more confident decisions when planning and specifying healthcare spaces. Informed tools, such as the WELL Building Standard from the International Well Building Institute (IWBI), or the Living Building Challenge from the International Living Future Institute (ILFI), provide considerable additional guidance. Also, new products and materials, backed by independent certifications, are equipping specifiers in securing the desired design outcome.

Just as a successful design encompasses multiple attributes to promote wellness, so too advanced products can offer compounding benefits for a project. Stone wool ceiling panels are highly sound absorptive and use high-performance materials that do not require biocides, antimicrobials, or fire retardants to meet performance specifications. Their design creates better acoustic privacy while meeting stringent safety codes. Additionally, stone wool ceiling panels are Low VOC to protect Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and boast natural and durable materials that can be recycled at the end of their life.

Likewise, new wide-reach faucet designs address patient, staff, and safety concerns. Staff efficiency is increased so that healthcare workers can more easily perform tasks like filling containers or washing medical instruments. For patients, easier access to water promotes better hand hygiene, potentially reducing healthcare-associated infections. Universal Design wide-reach faucets accommodate users of various heights and physical abilities, aligning with ADA requirements and preserving access. The improved ergonomics also encourage more efficient water use, as users can more easily position their hands under the stream, enhancing water conservation.

The ability of materials to empower wellness continues even when out of sight. The use of constrained layer damping (CLD) gypsum panels in wellness-based designs can help support the safety, health, healing, and well-being of patients and caregivers. CLD gypsum panels may be used to meet fire and sound codes in lieu of traditional drywall. Partitions constructed using CLD panels can reduce costs, time, and waste by eliminating the need for additional material to increase noise control performance with improved Sound Transmission Class (STC) ratings. CLD panels with steel cores can be used in extreme impact areas, used as anchor points for equipment, or by adding additional shear resistance.

On the walls themselves, incorporating natural elements and art can enhance health, well-being, and productivity through biophilic principles. Commercial products, from wayfinding signage to elevator interiors, from wall art and wall protection to roller shades, can all play host to art and nature. Different art styles and movements, with their distinctive features and historical importance, can be integrated into interiors to positively influence mental and emotional health. Effectively integrating art into functional products creates items that go beyond the durability of a space to also meet aesthetic needs.

Outside, modular deck systems give designers the flexibility to create unique and beautiful rooftop environments and outdoor spaces. More than fifty published studies highlight natural daylight and views of nature as key factors that contribute to faster patient recovery, lower medication reliance, reduced stress for staff and families, and enhanced emotional well-being. Providing a healing garden or outdoor area extends the healthcare space and provides a place for social connectivity as well as connectivity to the natural world. Modular decks allow architects to include a mix of pavers and surface materials including wood, stone, structural porcelain, crushed rock, grating, artificial turf, and concrete, as well as planter cubes and benches to fashion unique, custom looks. Versatile, adjustable pedestal deck systems can be utilized over any structural surface - on bare structural decks, rooftop decks, roof membranes, green roofs, terraces, compacted grade, pavement, pool surrounds, or water features.

By adopting the patient and care worker’s points of view, design input is now considering not only physical but also social and psychological needs. This shift in viewpoint has prompted innovations aimed at enhancing physical, sensory, and psychological comfort, improving wayfinding systems, and increasing the clarity of the meanings communicated by space design.⁹

Photo: ©Michael O’Callahan; courtesy of Rockon.

When designing healthcare spaces, architects and designers take on a significant role in people’s health and wellbeing, by creating spaces that pay attention to wellness within design.

Photo courtesy The Chicago Faucet Company

Standards aim to improve accessibility, hygiene, and functionality in healthcare settings. For example, standards recommending wide-reach faucets aim to create more user-friendly and hygienic environments in healthcare facilities, contributing to better patient care and staff performance.

WELLNESS BENCHMARKS: CERTIFICATIONS AND STANDARDS THAT EMPOWER DECISION MAKING

A building’s materials collaborate to create a united product portfolio, designed to take on the biggest challenges. The challenges the built environment faces are especially prominent in healthcare. Each product should offer carefully designed, innovative solutions that promote occupant comfort, safety, and wellness. Third-party certifications and programs enable design professionals to make discerning selections with confidence, helping to guide a project to realize its full potential.

When making decisions for the health of a building and its occupants, look for products with demonstrable transparency and supported with life-cycle assessment documentation. Product transparency means that all relevant product information is fully and freely available to the public. These disclosures and accountability markers help designers, specifiers, and end-users make informed purchasing decisions about which materials should be placed in buildings. There are multiple independent reporting tools that disclose the precise material makeup of products.

The Health Product Declaration (HPD) Open Standard is a process for the accurate, reliable, and consistent reporting of product contents and associated health information. A published Health Product Declaration discloses the ingredients in the material or system, up to 100 parts per million. A published Health Product Declaration (HPD) allows a project team to specify products with confidence.

Building upon the HPD, The Healthy Hospitals Initiative (HHI) encourages healthcare systems to measure the impact on improved patient, worker, and community health by reducing energy and waste, choosing safer and less toxic products, and purchasing and serving healthier foods. Practice Greenhealth acts as a guide for HHI in products that meet Initiative criteria. The Greenhealth Approved program was launched in late 2019 and provides centralized data submissions for suppliers wishing to vet products for healthcare organizations wishing to purchase more sustainable products.

For comprehensive project certification, The WELL Building Standard is an evidence-based system for measuring, certifying, and monitoring the performance of building features that impact health and wellbeing. The standard is divided into 10 concepts: Air, Water, Nourishment, Light, Movement, Thermal Comfort, Sound, Materials, Mind, and Community.

U.S Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Building Design and Construction: Healthcare provides a rating system meant for hospitals that operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week and provide inpatient medical treatment, including acute and long-term care. A more rigorous focus on water efficiency, access to nature, and daylighting addresses the links between sustainability and the health of the patient.

Living FutureSM Living Building Challenge provides a framework for designing, constructing, and improving the symbiotic relationships between people and all aspects of the built and natural environments. The seven Petals of the Challenge facilitate restoration and regenerative principles across a design.

Additional excellent resources for healthcare product selection guidelines include applicable Facility Guidelines Institute (FGI) guidelines, Green Globes Assessment Protocol for Commercial Buildings, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – Design Requirements Manual.

Photo courtesy Inpro

Choosing products and materials with independent certifications enables confident decision-making for demanding healthcare spaces.

The Designer’s Charge

Architects and designers have a significant role to play in people’s health and well-being by creating spaces that pay attention to wellness within design. This means verifying the selection of the best and healthiest materials; it also means combining these materials together in ways that create a holistic design, enabling wellness.

Stress factors for patients in healthcare environments are often related to the inability to control their surroundings, especially in terms of physical and organizational spaces and timings of the place of care.¹⁰ Other stress factors include the lack of visual and auditory privacy, the presence of unfamiliar and often disturbing sounds, artificial lighting with a low comfort level, and intense environmental smells.

A place perceived as welcoming, understandable, aesthetically attractive, and relaxing promotes the development of a greater sense of trust and activates positive feedback to the information and the stimulations coming from outside.¹¹ When design teams leverage a universal approach to support improved well-being for all populations, healthcare becomes accessible to all.

WELLNESS AESTHETICS: USING ART AND NATURE TO NURTURE

Central to a holistic design approach in healthcare is the concept of biophilia. Biophilic design is a design philosophy that encourages the use of natural systems and processes in the design of the built environment.¹² As EBD continues to demonstrate, hospital design plays a tangible role in the restoration of patients. There is a growing movement towards creating these restorative environments by reconnecting humans to nature.¹³ “Biophilic design is more complex and richer than the mere application of vegetation in buildings; it broadens the variety through encompassing different types of nature from physical, sensory, metaphorical, morphological, material to spiritual.¹⁴

Biophilic Design for the Interior

Incorporating biophilia into a project’s interior design allows people to maintain their biological connection to nature, even indoors. Humans have an innate affinity for the life-supporting aspects of the natural world. Understanding this inherent attraction to the natural world has spurred innovation in the architectural community. Working through digital imagery or prints on an architectural product, art that features biophilia can play an impactful role.

Biophilia in medical facilities improves occupant mood, helps promote efficiency and satisfaction in healthcare, and can decrease time spent in recovery for patients. By incorporating permanent biophilic features into the built environment, designers can ensure that everyone reaps the benefits from contact with nature. In an environment where direct exposure may not be possible, such as an aseptic medical environment, images of nature can provide a connection to the natural world for both patients and medical professionals.¹⁵

Biophilic elements can also enable wayfinding. Healthcare campuses present a unique set of navigational challenges. Often, these environments have developed over time and encompass multiple buildings. This makes navigation among the buildings complex. In addition, patients and families who visit healthcare campuses are often under stress. Wayfinding systems can help reduce their stress by providing easy-to-follow signage and legible directions to their destinations, according to the Society for Experiential Graphic Design. Using biophilia, and coordinating themes, imagery, and colors, minimizes reliance on text-based messaging and instead places the burden on more easily interpreted non-text cues such as colors and symbols.¹⁶ Designed sounds are used for wayfinding too.

The use of images of nature in the built environment has been widely investigated in environmental psychology. Images of nature have been found to be as stress-reducing as actual views of nature in certain circumstances.¹⁷ Images of nature can even be more restorative than the view of real nature, depending on the content of the image and the view of nature.¹⁸ Art, then, can become a crucial component of any healthcare space by bringing in the natural world.

Photo courtesy Inpro

Transform interiors with printed wall protection, which provides design freedom for stunning and durable walls. PETG protection guarantees longevity, and clear sheet back-printing maintains graphic vibrancy without scratches, enabling design professionals to customize with images, branding, or statements.

Blending Biophilia and Art with Architectural Products

New digital imaging and printing techniques have enabled endless possibilities when it comes to adding art to architectural products, including wall coverings, panels, shades, and signage. Design professionals are no longer limited to solid colors or patterned wallpaper. Stock photography and curated artworks from artists can be showcased through architectural products. Any image can find a place on a project’s walls, signage, or even window treatments. Art is no longer something relegated to hang on the wall as an ornament, it can be transformed into something that is ultimately functional. Complete customization enables architects and designers to create unique, one-of-a-kind products that produce an unforgettable experience for building occupants. The colors, materials, textures, and impact-resistance levels of these products also offer designers and facility staff limitless options to enhance the aesthetics of a facility’s interior, while delivering much-needed protection to the edifice itself.

It’s a difficult balancing act to design beautiful interiors that can also stand the test of time in harsh environments, such as healthcare. Architects and design professionals can slow the inevitable wear and tear by thinking long-term and specifying products that not only preserve their design and artistic vision but also serve building owners in preserving a structure long after the ribbon is cut. This can mean, in high-use areas, selecting products that protect the planned interior from accruing damage in the first place.

Walls are one of the largest elements of the built interior. Thanks to innovations in technology, designers no longer have to compromise their visions by using drab institutional products, nor do they have to sacrifice durability for aesthetics. Adding design integrated into wall protection gives walls an additional purpose while expanding their longevity and enhancing protection against damage. Durable wall panels can be used in high-traffic spaces prone to damage and deterioration. Specifying printed wall protection provides a protective wallcovering that can be applied directly to the wall at virtually any size. When the graphic is back-printed onto clear sheet, like Polyethylene terephthalate glycol (PETG), the custom artwork, photography, or image remains vivid and will not get scratched over time.

In areas that do not need enhanced protection, printed wall art offers completely customizable design options, enabling the professional to choose impactful photography, logos, or colors to align with the brand and continue the design scheme. Printed signage allows art to be integrated in creative ways throughout the space. Printed cubicle curtains, window treatments, and shower curtains, made from fiberglass, polyester, vinyl, and acrylic, can help to block glare and unwanted heat while still allowing a degree of natural light. When combined with digital print capabilities, these fabrics create the perfect combination to add and display art within commercial buildings.

Photo: © Craig Dugan Photography; courtesy Inpro

Not only can art enhance the human experience, many architectural products also benefit the environmental profile of a space, with LEED and Greenguard Gold certifications, as well as HPDs.