Kudos To Janelle Baglien

Anytime you are in a Kaiser Permanente facility, notice the art hanging on the walls. It isn't "plunk art" or there's a blank space, let's plunk something there! There's a vision behind the placement. At At Kaiser Permanente’s new Westside Medical Center, in Hillsboro, Ore. The owner set out to “make the best patient environment through the use of such elements as daylighting, natural views, and outdoor awareness,” and art is a big factor for achieving that feeling.

At the Westside Medical Center, Kaiser established an overarching theme, “tranquil relief through nature,” to help guide the design of its 38^th hospital, which includes a 126-bed hospital and 110,000-square foot medical office building (MOB). Then it hired Janelle Baglien, president of  Studio Art Direct (Portland, Ore.) early on to procure an art program with AECOM (Minneapolis), which handled the architecture and interior design. Themes were created for each floor, such as forests, water, wildflowers, and mountains/long-distance views, with corresponding wall colors, flooring, carpeting, and artwork.

Baglien procured 975 works of art—only 35 of which are off-the-shelf. In addition, the program used all regional artists from Oregon and Washington. Read the whole story in Healthcare Design and more about how the works were created on Baglien's blog, 

Congratulations go to ZGF Architects for Interiors Awards 2013: Healthcare from Contract Magazine for the design of Randall Children’s Hospital

"Located on the Legacy Emanuel Medical Center campus in Portland, Oregon, the 334,000-square-foot facility consolidates services that were previously housed in disparate locations and connects to an existing hospital building that still provides support services. Appropriately, the new facility references its Pacific Northwestern context, but also takes cues from hospitality design and the visuals to which children respond positively."

Combatting the fear and anxiety experienced during hospital visits is especially challenging for children and their families, but the ZGF design beckons children to come in and play.