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An Architect’s Thoughts on Hospital Rooms

When an architect ends up in the hospital, even then they keep on observing and judging the spaces they occupy there.

Jeff Pelletier is the Managing Principal and Founder of Board & Vellum, an architecture, interior design, and landscape architecture firm in Seattle, Washington.
Jeff Pelletier
September 9, 2011

Content has been coming a bit slower lately as I've been slammed with some great project work and, very recently, "enjoying" the finer details of a Swedish Hospital room due to an unexpected trip down appendicitis Lane.

Let me say that in this lane I appear to have been run over by a truck, mugged, and literally experienced some eye-opening pain. Eye-opening as in crazy Jack Nicholson open. Apparently, since I've never really had any major pain before I know that my tolerance is quite low. This the kind of thing I wish I hadn't added to my "you learn something new every day" pile.

Warning: I'm currently drugged out of my mind writing this.

In any case, it has given me time to review the hospital from my particular vantage point. That would be horizontal or quickly on my way to horizontal. Here are some thoughts:

  1. The ceiling tiles above the pre-surgery prep area have individual ceiling tiles that have photos of green leaves on them. It was fun, insightful, kinda cheese-ball, and showed an attempt to personalize what can be a very generic space. My rating?
  2. The room has little triangle bays with one side of the bay being a window. I get a great view of downtown and it provides a swell little space for guests together. The exterior and interior work together to make a good solution. I give it 4 out of 4 Percocets. At least that's all I have had in the past few hours.
  3. The curtain that divides my bed area from the next one isn't quite long enough for the track. I can either see the head of the person next to me (which could be cool as right now I have no idea who it is as I was passed out when they joined me in the room) or random people can see my hospital booty-clad feet. I give this unfortunate situation 1 out of 4 little plastic urinal bottles. This one's a pisser. Har dee har.

Seeing my writing just ventured down the pee pee joke direction, I'm going to cap my list at three observations. That, and a bonus shout out to all the great staff here. They've been nothing but amazing.

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