Center for the Urban Child: 2015 BoY Winner for Small Healthcare
For little ones and teens, this center provides everything from primary care to nutritional counseling and social services—all under one roof, in a single stylish setting by design director Saul Jabbawy. Visitors, big and small, enter the two-level, 30,000-square-foot facility via a lobby and a waiting area chockablock with vibrant graphics showcasing kids from the city’s different neighborhoods. “The images were selected through a competition themed around the idea of play,” Jabbawy explains. Winning entries were then digitally printed on resin panels, which separate the check-in stations running along one side of the space. The waiting room for patients with anything contagious is completely separate, but the project’s healthy palette of sky blue, sunny yellow, and lime green on walls and ceilings carries through.
Speaking of the ceilings, canopies in acoustical tile—in those same lively colors, naturally—alternate with sections of bare slab and exposed mechnicals. “Changing conditions allow the space to breathe,” Jabbawy explains, going on to note the cylindrical pendant fixtures that descend through the openings to subtly demarcate circulation routes. “That relates to children, given their posture of looking up.” Thanks to his work, they’ll see a brighter future.
Project Team: Jian Chen; Charles Kronk; Laura Ireson; Colleen Blackwell; Joanne Sharma; David Gordon; Christopher Brown.
