Can Google architects work their magic on China's depressing hospitals?
NBBJ has designed offices for Google, Microsoft and Tencent. Now it’s turning its hand towards a sector notorious for monotonous designs and depressing environments
Experience in designing office buildings for technology giants from Google and Microsoft to Tencent has inspired the architecture firm NBBJ to make blueprints for China’s hospital buildings, which are otherwise notorious for their overcrowded spaces, monotonous designs and depressing environments.
Hospitals should be designed to be flexible spaces that can accommodate new technology and equipment and encourage a smooth flow of staff and goods, according to NBBJ, one of a number of foreign architecture firms with ambitions in the China market.
Having designed facilities for 11 out of the top 17 American hospitals and medical centres, the company has announced plans to expand on the mainland, where it has only one finished project – Shanghai Children’s Medical Centre. The company has been ranked the second-largest healthcare architecture firm by the UK magazine Building Design.
Rudy Widjaja, the firm’s Shanghai principal and the person in charge of Asia Healthcare Practice, said new technology had brought tremendous changes to the medical sector: doctors now used social media to communicate with patients, and apps helped patients reduce their waiting times in registering and purchasing medicine.
“For hospitals, to accommodate new technology and this kind of lifestyle change, I think we need to make sure that designs are flexible enough for space to adapt over the next few years,” he told the South China Morning Post. “In the near future, hospital design should be very flexible, so any new technology can adapt and can be used to help hospitals to operate efficiently.”