IIDA Perspective - Fall/Winter 2017 - 34

We had
patients
come in for
a half-day
focus group,
and those
discussions
drove the
open-concept
design. They
told us their
biggest fear
was isolation,
and that they
needed each
other in order
to cope."
-Teri Oelrich

One dramatic example of VR's edge is Gensler's design
for visual computing technology company NVIDIA's
new headquarters, which opened this fall in Santa Clara,
California, USA. Gensler used the technology to develop a
photo-realistic representation of the entire building, inside
and out. The VR model was then used to tweak design
details-right down to the pattern and texture of the carpets.
Svigals + Partners is similarly able to adjust design on the
fly. The company uses HTC Vive VR goggles and Enscape,
a recently developed 3D plug-in for the Revit software
platform, to let its designers and clients get inside a project.
"You can get a sense of the space that a 2D on-screen
rendering would never give you," Lovegren says. "That's the
big jump. It's a total game changer."
NBBJ believes so strongly in VR's future that it
incubated the VR firm Visual Vocal within its own walls
three years ago. Visual Vocal utilizes an inexpensive viewer
that can be clipped to a smartphone and offers a cloudbased app that any design company-not just NBBJ-can
buy. It's helping clients get inside the guts of a project-no
VR lab, computers, or high-end goggles necessary.
Steve McConnell, FAIA, LEED AP, managing partner,
NBBJ, Seattle, Washington, USA, says VR is fostering
a new kind of creative process. "The potential to be
understood or misunderstood is high when you're dealing
with the abstracts of design," he says. "But a tool like this
eliminates ambiguity. And that facilitates better decisionmaking. That's very different from the old paradigm of a
'lone genius' drawing a model of what a project is supposed
to be. And that's going to change the way projects are
developed in the future."

Photo provided by: Gensler

Gensler's design for NVIDIA's new
headquarters, which opened this
fall in Santa Clara, California,
USA, used virtual reality to
develop a photo-realistic
representation of
the entire
building.

The Emergency Department's
Purposeful Design
Twenty-six percent of adults suffer from a diagnosable mental
disorder in the United States. And when these patients need
care, it's often emergency departments (ED) that become
their go-to resource. According to Hospital Industry Data

Photo by: Laura Peters

Holy Cross Hospital Inpatient Behavioral Health Unit in
Chicago, Illinois, USA was designed by CannonDesign
and features many of the hallmarks of on-trend
emergency department design, including airy, open
waiting spaces; visible, accessible staff; and a choice
between public or private space.

perspective

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Institute for the Missouri Hospital Association, ED visits
for mental diseases and disorders at statewide hospitals
have increased 42 percent since 2006. But EDs-in small
communities especially-are often ill-equipped to treat these
patients. While many healthcare providers are participating
in programs and partnerships to improve their services for
these patients, some are also turning to the power of design
to create better environments and reduce the stigma of
mental illness treatment.
Fundamental to this movement is the assigning of
separate space devoted to mental health emergencies. "While
just as urgent as physical traumas, behavioral emergencies
often require their own unique responses," says Jocelyn
Stroupe, IIDA, ASID, AAHD, director of healthcare
interiors, CannonDesign. Stroupe and her team recently
completed the design of UnityPoint Health-Trinity's
new heart center and ED, a facility that features a crisis
stabilization (CSU) unit in close proximity to the ED which
ensures behavioral health patients receive medical screening
in a calm environment that promotes de-escalation. "The
CSU offers a 'living room' component to help behavioral
health patients relax and stay calm during these stressful
moments," says Stroupe. "Spaces like this are becoming a
best practice across healthcare."
Another successful model can be found at the new Unity
Center for Behavioral Health in Portland, Oregon, USA.
The facility features an open, low-walled, comfortably
furnished waiting space, which international design firm
NBBJ discovered early on was essential to its design. "We
had patients come in for a half-day focus group, and those
discussions drove the open-concept design," says Teri
Oelrich, partner, NBBJ, Portland. "They told us their biggest
fear was isolation, and that they needed each other to cope."
Unity's other behavioral-specific design elements,
identified through patient and clinical staff focus groups,
include dimmable lighting, soothing colors, and soundabsorbent materials, such as sliding doors and acoustical
tiles-all of which stands polar opposite to the aggressive,
noisy, quarantined environments of traditional mental
health facilities. "We now understand those environments
can actually escalate health issues for certain patient types,"
Oelrich says. n

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