Healthcare Design - March 2016 - 10

MONITOR
Edited by Anne DiNardo

Before Juliana Children's Hospital opened in June
2015 as part of The Hague Hospital, Dutch firm
MVSA Architects (a member of building consortium VolkerWesselsHaga) sought to enrich its
architectural and interior design with a "finishing
touch" that would create a positive distraction for
young patients and their families. It turned to Tinker
Imagineers (Utrecht, The Netherlands), an experience design firm that created an interactive journey
for visitors to take inside the hospital, using projections, hands-on objects, and 43,055 square feet of
graphic wallcoverings.
The storyline centers on five friends-Hug, Happy,
Fold, C-bot, and Vizzle-who live in a world of
sea, sun, and sand within Juliana Children's. Each
character is designed with its own personality to
help kids find one to identify with, such as C-bot,
who's curious about medical devices, or Hug, who's
soft and sweet like a teddy bear. These characters
appear throughout the hospital so patients can find
them during their stay-from the atrium and waiting
areas to the corridors and treatment rooms.
"It lets the children forget that they are actually
in a hospital," says Stan Boshouwers, partner and
founder of Tinker Imagineers. "Interactivity is an
important tool to create an immersive and playful
environment where children become part of the
story. That's important because children and, more
importantly, their parents experience a lot of stress
during their visit."
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The animated projections
are created using three layers:
a static wall graphic; a dynamic
screensaver with graphic elements that light up, such as the
string of a kite or the blades of
a helicopter; and the interactive animations. For example, in the OR corridor, a patient's movement down
the hallway activates animated projections at three
points where they can watch the characters move,
form different shapes, or fly away. "It stimulates their
own imagination and lets them forget they're on their
way to surgery," Boshouwers says. The story then
continues in the recovery room where the characters
show up via an iPad app to check in on the patient.
Additionally, clinicians can use the animations to
distract, stimulate play, or provide information during treatment sessions, such as in the lung function
room, where patients can watch Happy blowing
bubbles in the background, just like they have to do.
In the public elevators, two portholes are integrated
into a wall at different heights with animations that
change at each floor, including an underwater scene
to mark the ground floor, a beach scene for the first
floor, and an aerial view for the second floor. Other
playful elements are incorporated into the hospital, including a play ship in the atrium and an airship on the
top floor, in front of the hospital's Ronald McDonald
House, where children can climb into the cockpit and
pretend to fly.-Anne DiNardo

Top, left: Everyday objects
are incorporated into the
wall graphics throughout
Juliana Children's Hospital,
including near the central
atrium (shown), which
also houses a play ship.
Top, right: The interactive
experience extends to
the public elevators,
where portholes located
at kids' eye levels show
different graphics at each
floor. Above: Projected
animations on the wall
in the pre-operating
room provide a positive
distraction for young
patients.

©MICHAEL VAN OOSTEN (CENTRAL ATRIUM); ©WIM VERBEEK (ADDITIONAL IMAGES)

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Healthcare Design - March 2016

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