Holistic Living Center - Midterm Review

Introduction

Our Health and Wellness studio project is based on HDR's Focal Point Program, which a mixed-use health campus design. HDR has proposed a financially self-sustaining campus which includes components of education, hospitality, recreation, retail and healthcare (St. Anthony's Hospital). We were asked to analyze the Focal Point Program, challenge the brief and propose a design that improves community health as a whole. This project was done by Alex Rasky and myself.

Research and Concept:

To understand the needs of this community, we studied the issues of this community as a class and found that people in Lawndale suffer from economic hardships. Some of the other issues include:

• Low Education Rates

• Low Childhood Opportunities

• Low Access to Healthcare

• Low Life Expectancy

• Behavioral Health Issues

• Infant Mortality

• Lack of Transportation

After our initial research and visits to the Hospitals in this community, we realized that there were many factors that contribute to the Health of the people and proposing only a Hospital is not the best solution to issues. We started looking at Blue Zones - a concept this describes the environments and lifestyles of the people with the highest longevity in the world. Social Interaction and Physical Activity were two contributing factors, which became the underlying concepts for our design project.

Blue Zones

We started working on how our basic concept relates to Health and how it can be applied in architecture. The following graphics illustrate how we envisioned what some of the spaces on our Health campus would look like.

Some of the factors that we thought encouraged social interaction and lead to better community include:

• Density

• Open Space

• Mixed Program

• Mixed Age Groups

• Physical Activity

• One-Stop Shop

• Connection to Nature

There were a lot more advantages in grouping different programs onto one site as compared to spreading out into the community. Therefore, we worked on a 38 acre site located on 31st and Kedzie and our project includes the following program areas:

After many adjacency studies, we began to place different programs together - an assisted living facility and a daycare which share a common open space; education facilities placed close to the innovation center so that they could use the common facilities; the "Step-Down Living" facility and the hospital, and so on. The retail component of the site includes shops, grocery stores, restaurant and cafes, and are spread out throughout the site. The entire site is pedestrian friendly, with one vehicular access road along the periphery. The main spine is the largest pedestrian street with secondary roads connecting different parts of the site.

Future Steps:

Based on the feedback we received during our midterms, we are now working on making our main spine more prominent and detailing the different social interaction spaces on our site.