Projects: Health care

Staff -- Interior Design, 12/1/2011 2:00:00 AM

Winner: Studio Gaia
Project: Dongtan Jeil Women's Hospital
Location: South Korea

Celebrating the moments before, during, and after childbirth, this maternity hospital is outfitted more like a sophisticated boutique hotel. The 200,000-square-foot facility, just 30 minutes from downtown Seoul, has nine color-coded levels by principal Ilan Waisbrod. On the ground level, yellow, he enlivened the ceiling above the escalators with a cluster of giant chromed "pebbles" interspersed with twinkling LEDs. In the patients' rooms, sofas are strewn with pillows in a cherry-blossom pattern, veneer is white oak, and pleasingly rounded mirrors conceal medical equipment. A glass wall gives the bamboo-clad Lamaze and yoga room and the glass-tiled swimming pool views of each other. In the equally upscale café, Jean Prouvé side chairs pull up to oak-veneered tables set beneath pendant fixtures with elongated shades. The mood gets decidedly more kid-friendly in the pediatrics lounge, where the seating, flooring, and ceiling treatment take the form of brightly colored puzzle pieces. 

Merit: Habjan Architecture & Interior Design
Project: Zenthea
Location: New  York

Concealed from the waiting area by an undulating plaster­board partition, three dental treatment rooms have feature walls in mother-of-pearl, fig bark, or teak.

Merit: Tsoi/Kobus & Associates
Project: University of Minnesota Amplatz Children's Hospital
Location: Minneapolis

Behind a multicolored facade, paneled in stainless steel, six animal-theme levels consolidate pediatric programs and in­patient units.

Merit: Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects
Project: Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Location: Brooklyn, New York

This prototype chemotherapy infusion center's 12 treatment pods offer modernist-inspired chairs, each with a touch screen to control the temperature and lighting.