by It is a delight to see a new “hotel style” hospital — reaching 10 storeys at a cost of $220 million — that also poses as a work of Art on a blighted landscape. Here’s the new Cooper University Hospital in Camden, New Jersey. The building glows in the twilight.
As a patient care facility, Cooper’s new Pavilion with its stark white walls, marble floors and soaring three-story atrium is designed to woo patients and successful doctors to Camden….
All the new rooms are private, which has become the standard in new hospital construction, with comfortable space for visiting families. Each room also has a chair that converts into a single bed for a family member to spend the night.
Hallways are carpeted because noise is the number one patient complaint and because they are easier on nurses who walk miles a day, said Jay Blose, an architect with Ewing Cole who has spent the last five years managing the Cooper project.
The Pavilion also contains 12 new operating rooms. The rest of the $220 million was spent on amenities, such as an outside healing garden, a business center complete with Internet access and copy machines for visitors, a health care library and a larger, more upscale restaurant than the former Cooper Court.
It is delightful to see the new Cooper University Hospital was built for comfort and caring.
Too often hospitals are cold and antiseptic places more made for death than healing.
We applaud the healing garden and the capacity for family to stay with the patient to help make the healing dyad between hospital and human a work of art instead of a task of woe.
That’s the kind of hospital I’d like to visit some time. I want a hospital that says “welcome” instead of “NEXT!!!!”
Me too, Gordon! Why can’t hospitals be public places for gathering and introspection? They should be the heart of community healing and not just places to go when you are sick.
Wow David! Love those greens inside! Awesome photography!
I, too, love the “outside in” feel of the hospital, Katha. I am also in favor of large window views for every patient so they can enjoy what they cannot yet have: A return to the real world.