-By Breeze Glazer

"Designing for Health" is a monthly, Web-exclusive series from healthcare interior design leaders at Perkins+Will that focuses on the issues, trends, challenges, and research involved in crafting today's healing environments. This month's article, entitled “We Eat What We Build,” by Breeze Glazer, focuses on the design of New York’s Jaffe Food Allergy Institute.

"We are what we build"—a concept that recognizes the link between human health and sustainability—is always present in the healthcare interiors work of Perkins+Will. In the design of the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, a particularly sensitive approach was required to respond to the needs of patients with acute food allergies. According to Peter Syrett, AIA, LEED AP, associate principal, "the whole design takes a poignant position that pediatric spaces should not be didactic, but instead work for a wide range of patients, visitors, and staff—from a newborn to its anxious and worried patient." This process was only possible because all stakeholders shared the desire for a new paradigm, an architectural solution that supported the Institute's role in providing comprehensive clinical care for food allergy patients. The project creates an architecture of engagement that works to address the inherent fears and anxiety of pediatric food allergy patients and their parents through a dialogue that mediates between sustainability and aesthetics, the subtle and the overt. While most architecture serves to only support the human experience, the design of the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute helps to assuage the concerns of the patient and effectively improve that experience.

The 3,500-sq.-ft. Jaffe Food Allergy Institute features many food based sustainable building materials that express their positive functionality while subtlety engaging the occupant. The materials selected were vetted through a matrix that compared factors of health, sustainability, and connection to food. This process helped to locate materials that responded to each factor, while eliminating those that didn't. For example, milk-based paint was initially selected but ultimately dismissed due to concerns for lactose intolerance. The linoleum flooring contains materials from both flax and jute plants. The pantry area utilizes wheatboard while other millwork includes the use of solid palmwood in the staff support areas. The design reflects the notion that while access to an unlimited range of food is something often taken for granted, for a certain population interaction with food presents a continual challenge and identification of food is paramount. Megan Morgan, department administrator at The Mount Sinai Medical Center, explains, "The impetus for the renovation was the kids and family who are often in severe state of anxiety and distress, and you want them to feel both comfortable and welcome. You want the space to be very professional and interactive for kids, and you want it to represent the quality of the medicine they are about to receive." The fact that it is "about food" engages the patietns and their families positively. Food based materials are integrated with a more perceptible food image-based system of wayfinding. The two approaches work in tandem to support a creative and succinct architectural expression.

While healthcare spaces commonly can be difficult to navigate for the adult patients, children experience even greater challenges. "Signs are literal indicators of design failure, and you should fundamentally be able to navigate a space without them," states Syrett. This understanding is boldly addressed through an overarching concern for wayfinding for both patients and staff throughout the space. In the main circulation spine, wall-to-ceiling panels display magnified and abstracted images of fruit. During design, parent focus groups had somewhat visceral reactions to literal depictions of particular foods and their ractions led to the more abstracted images ultimately chosen. The skewed panels transform the linearity typical of double-loaded corridors, while the vivid images have the quality of a specimen examined under a microscope.

The theme supports the mission of the Jaffe Food Allergy Insitute, a program that is doing preeminent innovative work  in styudying the genomic factors of food allergy. "It was consistent with the message of the green space, of being a healthful space, of food, and the reason you're here—it's a framework or background. We saw it as a complement to the program," explains Morgan. Wayfinding for examination rooms facilitates an understanding for both children and adults, operating on two separate informational data. The rooms are identified by common objects like clocks and buttons, etched into a circular glass panel at a young child’s eye level. The cut outs are visual clues that provide a stimulating navigation experience throughout the space. At adult eye level, textured palm wood panels adjacent to each examination room offer natural hues help to break up the bold colors of the space while also enabling a tactual relationship with the occupant.

Paramount to the project, "the generosity of the Jaffe family made this possible," says Morgan, while Syrett explains, "as a philanthropically endowed project, credit is given to the Jaffe family for their vision with medicine and architecture for children." This vision has resulted in a design that, after just a year of occupancy, has already seen a "demonstrated impact for the patient and families—and staff, from doctors to secretaries,” says Morgan. “If you're in a beautiful environment like this you feel respected, it makes you treat the environment with more respect and makes you proud to work here. Patients come in and are pleased with the aesthetic, so it has been a great morale booster and workspace improvement." Mount Sinai Medical Center conducts rigorous patient satisfaction surveys, and the feedback from the new space has been consistently positive, Morgan notes, adding that "patients like nice spaces, and that's clearly reflected in the surveys; repeat visitors comment on the improvement." With a concept driven by a relationship to food, a more appropriate motto to reflect the success of the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute might now be  "we eat what we build."
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Breeze Glazer, LEED AP, is a national market sector researcher for healthcare sustainability at Perkins+Will. Glazer’s healthcare experience includes transitional shelters, clinics, and hospitals, and is currently focused on helping shift the healthcare paradigm towards a regenerative model. He can be reached at Breeze.Glazer@Perkinswill.com.

Past installments of "Designing for Health" include (click on title to access the full article):
• Evidence-Based Healthcare Design Forum
• Designing the Ideal Space
• The Importance of Family in Patient Rehabilitation
• Maximizing the Impact of Art in Architecture
• The Benefits of Healthcare Learning Environments
• Making Hospitals More Hospitable for Children and Their Families