Timeless Design Updated
Back in 1990, we included the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula in CA as one of the tours for our Third Symposium on Health Care Interior Design (the predecessor to our current conference, HEALTHCARE DESIGN). The hospital’s architect, Edward Durell Stone, was one of America’s premier modernist architects — and one of the few of his generation who “got” what hospital design should be about. He believed in providing comfort to patients by giving them access to nature through courtyards, interior and exterior landscaping, water features, etc.
Those are ideas we’re still talking about today. Stone also wrote that a hospital is “the toughest problem in architecture. It is as if every room were either a kitchen, a bath, or a boiler room. It’s not something you can design by remote control.”
I was delighted to see feature articles on the Monterey Hospital in the August issues of Health Facilities Management (HFM) and Architectural Record magazines. Both are thoughtful explorations of a new 200,000 sq. ft. addition designed by HOK that opened in 2007. Another 90,000 sq. ft. in renovated space is expected to open in 2010.
Record writes that the “firm’s major challenge was maintaining the Zen-like peacefulness and iconic design of a complex that has become a fixture in the community while carrying out such an extensive enlargement and modernization and adhering to the incredibly strict regulations of the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD).” The writer also observes that the “original building’s focus on the natural environment is not only maintained, but even enhanced” — with a healing garden, hallways with floor-to-ceiling height windows, natural finishes, and large corner common rooms.
HFM’s assessment of the new pavilion design is similar, noting that the original patient rooms (which may have been the first all-private patient rooms in the U.S.) “were clustered in groups of four, with each group sharing a balcony overlooking a wooded area.” Patient rooms in the new pavilion do not have balconies, but larger windows to simulate the look of a balcony.
It’s good to see such an exemplary facility grow as its community grows and healthcare changes, but not lose what makes it unique. Edward Durrell Stone would be proud.