#PUBLIC ARCHITECTURE PROJECTS
How design humanizes patients’ experience at the St Charles Bend Cancer Center
The patient-centric, regionally-focused cancer research center in Oregon brings a healing, spa-like environment to a clinical setting. ZGF Architects LLP designed the facility as a true place of healing that allows patients to receive treatment in an outdoor infusion garden. The project, named St. Charles Bend Cancer Center, won this year's WAN Award in the healthcare category.
The architects set out to create a design that humanizes healthcare facilities by bringing relaxation and serenity to patients. Open, bright spaces and sweeping views are combined with a meticulously programmed interior. When it’s sunny, patients can go outside and receive treatment in an outdoor infusion garden dominated by sunshine, fresh air and views of the distant mountains.
The jury lauded the design’s replicability. “This brilliantly answers the brief and the requirements for treating cancer patients and has the ability of being replicated in other situations that you could almost pick it up and use it for a cancer patient in the UK, in the USA, anywhere. This has architectural merit and functional merit in answering the brief and I think in terms of saying to the world of architecture and clients, here is innovation to a huge problem we all have in the world of how to treat cancer,” said jury member Mike Rawlinson, Building Projects Manager at Spire Healthcare.
What an inspired design. We hope to see more like it – all over the world.
