Children's hospital focuses on patient-centered design in every detail

The Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital, which opened June 2012 in Chicago, Ill., was designed to make going to the hospital — and sometimes staying for months at a time — a little less scary of an experience for the children and their families, says an article in Architectural Record.

Some of the especially kid-friendly details called out in the article include a facade resembling stacked building blocks, life-size whale sculptures swimming in the lower lobby, and an indoor 5,000-square-foot "sky garden" where patients can taste the outdoors without leaving the hospital — a detail requested by the project's Kids Advisory Board.

The $605 million 288-bed hospital doubles the footprint of the facility it replaced. While the old hospital took up a city block, the new hospital rises 23 stories and covers 1.25 million square feet on less than two acres.

The 45-bed ER, and operating rooms on the 6th and 7th floors were stacked vertically to function as one department, the article says. The ER also has dedicated trauma elevators, which cut down on travel time for patients.

The hospital is connected on the second floor to its neighbor on the Northwestern Memorial Hospital campus — Prentice Women's Hospital, and a parking garage.

Read the article.