As a cancer patient himself, he understood that design could play a huge role in how patients experienced the often uncomfortable treatments. He started asking patients what they wanted in a new facility. “What I heard repeatedly is, ‘We don’t want sterile fluorescent lights. We don’t want to feel like we’re on a stage while we’re sitting on these high exam tables and freezing cold in gowns,'” he says. Patients wanted a softer experience, with more natural light, not the typical sterile white walls of a chilly hospital room.
“As we met with the architects, we went with a full natural material palette for everything, lots of varying textures and colors all relating to nature, what we felt was more soft and inviting,” Flora says. He wanted the project to “echo more the feeling you get when you walk into an Apple Store than the feeling you get when you walk into your gynecologist’s office.”
More on biophilic design for health settings
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