IIDA – Perspective Fall/Winter 2019 - 22

C
"

The Planned Parenthood staff
have the unique challenge of
needing to address and treat
patients who are particularly
vulnerable and in some cases
may be seeking care under
distressed conditions."
-Grace Chiang, AIA, ASID

22

perspective

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Safety Starts With the Site
That potential threat influences everything-from site
selection to build-out, says Chiang, who has worked with
the organization on multiple occasions over a span of 36
years.
All Planned Parenthood spaces must make every
effort to protect the staff and patients, including on-site
parking and features such as direct access to the building
so patients don't have to walk through protest lines.
"Since protesters cannot be on private property without
permission, this helps ensure safety and security for all the
building users," she says. The space also has to meet state
and federal rules for a healthcare facility while being big
enough to accommodate examination rooms, the abortion
clinic, and education space-ideally all on one floor for ease
of patient flow. And finally, it needs to be close to public
transportation so it's easily accessible to everyone in the
community.
On a nonprofit budget, these requirements can be a tall
order, Chiang says. When she launched her firm in 2012,
one of her first projects was to complete the design for
a new Planned Parenthood healthcare facility in Ithaca,
New York that opened in 2014. Chiang had spent roughly
the previous 10 years, on and off, helping the Planned
Parenthood team search for the right location, and they
followed her to her new firm so she could design it.
Over that decade of searching, Chiang visited dozens
of sites with the Planned Parenthood team, conducting

Photo by: (Previous Page) Derek E. Rothchild/Getty Images

Care. Compassion. Health. Empowerment. Respect.
These five words exemplify the pillars of Planned
Parenthood's mission. They shape everything the
organization does, from how it provides care to how it talks
about the design of its clinics and office spaces.
"We want all patients-regardless of ethnicity, gender
identity, income, language, or immigration status-to
feel welcomed and respected and to know that they are
receiving the highest-quality healthcare without judgment,"
says Meg Barnette, chief of staff and general counsel for
Planned Parenthood of New York City (PPNYC). "Those
five words animate our vision and shape a lot of the design
decisions we make."
But these decisions must take one additional critical
factor into consideration: safety. Because Planned
Parenthood offers abortion services, many of its facilities
are potentially subject to protests or even violent acts.
According to the National Abortion Federation, whose
members include Planned Parenthood affiliates, in 2018,
the number of individuals attempting to intimidate
patients and disrupt patient services at abortion facilities
continued to increase. This included more than 21,000
instances of online hate speech, 125 cases of vandalism, 14
instances of stalking, and 15 instances of assault and battery.
That ire can pose a significant challenge for Planned
Parenthood, its staff, and the nearly 2.4 million patients
who rely on the organization for services like cancer
screenings, hormone treatments, HIV services, and routine
checkups.
While the image of daily protesters at every Planned
Parenthood isn't an entirely accurate one, says Grace
Chiang, AIA, ASID, the president and co-founder of
Chiang O'Brien Architects in Ithaca, New York, there is
"always the underlying possibility of protesters who might
not be so peaceful."
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