SCO Family of Services offers kids and households all through New York Metropolis and Lengthy Island entry to a continuum of care that features bodily and psychological well being, wellness, schooling, housing, household youth justice providers, and household help.
Whereas the group operates a number of places round Jamaica, Queens, its Genovese Household Life Middle serves because the hub of the group’s programming within the neighborhood.
Nevertheless, after years in operation, the middle was feeling the constraints of its ageing constructing. “It was an previous maze of places of work and corridors and lifeless ends,” says Hayden Blades, vp of amenities and property administration for SCO Household of Providers. “We wished to carry a contemporary look to the area and make it extra environment friendly.”
Making a renovation plan
The objective was to renovate the present four-story constructing, which the group owned, with fashionable, versatile consumer areas and workspaces. SCO Household of Providers aimed to consolidate employees working in different leased areas into the renovated location to enhance employees efficiencies in addition to scale back actual property prices.
Moreover, the renovation would offer the chance to make use of design methods that help its shoppers, lots of whom have gone by traumatic experiences and obtain counseling and help providers on the middle. “We wished them to have an area the place they felt secure and comfy,” Blades says.
Contemporary healthcare facility
Opened in October 2022, the constructing’s first flooring homes a lot of the public-facing providers such because the foster care program’s medical clinic, which features a ready space, two examination rooms, clinician places of work, and phlebotomy lab.
On the identical flooring, the foster care household visiting room affords a big, inviting space for start dad and mom to carry supervised visits with their kids.
The higher ranges every have public-facing rooms for psychological well being counseling in addition to redesigned employees workspaces. Within the latter, enclosed places of work have been changed with open-floor layouts and various settings that help completely different wants, together with shared cubicles organized alongside the perimeter to maximise pure mild on the flooring and convention and counseling rooms housed within the core.
Using trauma-informed design
Working with Spacesmith (New York), the undertaking group utilized rules of trauma-informed design to ship a setting that promotes therapeutic all through the constructing. For instance, using research that present curvilinear varieties in inside settings could make individuals really feel extra serene than rectilinear shapes, the undertaking group designed all 90-degree corners and hall soffits in comfortable curves.
Biophilic components are additionally employed all through, comparable to nature-themed wallcoverings within the examination rooms and gender-neutral bogs and woodgrain doorways and carpeting with a stone-like sample.
“The concept is to get away from an institutional really feel to one thing that’s going to make individuals really feel welcome, relaxed, and calm,” says Ambar Margarida, principal at Spacesmith.
Addressing security in healthcare environments
Within the former setting, the middle utilized institutional furnishings that have been bolted to the ground to deal with safety wants.
Through the renovation, Margarida says the undertaking group targeted on addressing security with out impacting the general aesthetic. For instance, within the reception space, onerous, plastic chairs have been changed with weighted, high-backed comfortable furnishings in curvilinear configurations.
Blade says the intense and ethereal area has been effectively acquired by employees and shoppers. “Everybody who comes within the area is awed by the transformation,” he says.
Anne DiNardo is government editor of Healthcare Design. She might be reached at [email protected].
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