Feast Day 2012: Stay Inspired

Today, the Patron Saint of Architecture turns two!  When I made my first post on May 26, 2010, I never imagined that this blog would have touched so many lives.  I've met some wonderful architects from all over the world, had the opportunity to interview some amazing people on the subject of inspiration and creativity, taken a deep dive into the issues that hold us back as creatives in the Breaking Points and Turning Points novena, and gotten even more exposure for the blog through Wellness: The Series, my monthly article for Urban Times.  The past year has included expansion into new platforms- creating a Patron facebook page where I post daily doses of inspiration (so like it if you haven't already) as well as more interactive content like surveys and sharing by other sites like Healthcare Innovation by Design and Loth Furniture.  You can also visit the Enlighten Yourself link on the right column of this page to see my recommended reading for you in the categories of business, architecture and creative resources.  Just today, I created a Patron board on Pinterest, to allow creative images to be shared.  As I get this going, you will have the opportunity to post your ongoing work or favorite images to share with the group.  I am toying with the idea of a little You Tube streaming for the coming year as well! 

All of you devotees had an exciting year of opportunities to inspire you to be your best creative selves.  Please join in the litany of inspiration by sharing a quick story with all of us in the comments section.  As I learned last year, our greatest triumphs come from challenging ourselves.  When we know what we want and ask for it, it is surprising how easily we can get it.  For example, I never dreamed that author Robin Stern would agree to an interview about gaslighting, just because I looked her up and sent her an email, or well-known executive coach Lisa Petrilli would talk to me about leadership or Therapeutic Landscape expert Naomi Sachs would share her insights into biophilic design.  They all were so generous with their time and knowledge, and those interviews were some of the top posts of the past year - all it took was me truly pushing my introverted self to approach them.

Look for this year's novena, Change the World (An Experiment), an upcoming series that interviews changemakers in nine different cities about the role they played in turning their community around.  I hope that their inspirational stories will show you all the ways that you too can make a difference as an architect.

So, if you are sitting at your remarkably uninspiring desk feeling like all you do is churn out work to meet demands and deadlines, don't forget that inspiration is what you make of it- put on your party hat, grab a balloon and some cake and celebrate your creativity!  As a prize for all of you, please download the feast day icon - you didn't even have to play a festival game to win it!

Lost in the Trees on Wayfinding

I recently toured a newly-completed hospital and asked the architect who designed it about his firm’s approach to wayfinding.  He rattled off a series of textbook things they had done; a single point of entry, color/art themed elevator lobbies, views of the front entrance from the main point of arrival on every floor, color and art themes for department entry desks -  in other words, not nearly enough.  While I had noticed all of these elements and had no argument that they were viable wayfinding moves, I still felt disoriented in the facility.  Which way to go was not intuitive and the landmarks provided were only for major destination points, like the elevators, then I was on my own.  Even though I was being guided through the facility on a tour, I felt like I might have trouble if I got left behind and had to find my own way back.  How much more, then would an anxious patient or family member feel disoriented?

Even brand new greenfield buildings like this one suffer from deep floor plates and hallways that snake around, departments that are organized somewhat like mazes and lots and lots of walking to get to your destination.  It’s time for us to stop thinking that a few grand gestures to the idea of wayfinding are enough and start building our design around it as an infrastructure.

Many arrival points should converge at a single destination.  So often, we design fantastic front doors that open into amazing lobbies, forgetting how few of patients and visitors actually arrive this way.  What we think is a single point of entry in fact is not.  Most are coming from a parking structure that connects to the building at a point other than the main lobby.  Still more may be entering via an outpatient area or the emergency department.  Especially if the floor plate has morphed over time, these points of entry can be very remote from one another.  Creating a main circulation spine is important in order to link all of these entry points and help visitors to cognitively map the facility.   A single concourse similar to airport arrival gates that has drop off, but more importantly proximal parking along its length and immediate access to either a department or vertical transportation (which offers immediate floor access to a department) is critical to reducing distances and getting people oriented.

Design can’t stop at the public realm.  How many times have you entered a gorgeous lobby only to have your final destination be a clinic that couldn’t be more bare bones and, well, clinical in its appearance?  Patients staff and family all appreciate the lobby, but what would really make a difference is to have the clinical areas where they spend the bulk of their visit have that same attention to materiality, circulation hierarchies and amenity.  Just because you have arrived at the front door of your destination doesn’t mean that all wayfinding bets are off.  You still have to navigate this area, and you shouldn’t need an escort to find your way back out.

Getting to your destination should not be a vision quest.  Especially at large institutions, the sheer amount of walking from point A to B is staggering.  One institution I know of offers free parking for the first hour in their garages, which was laughable when it could take over 10 minutes just to get from your car to your final destination. At least at the airport they have people movers and those little carts.  In hospitals, you have to walk. For able-bodied me, this is an annoyance, for the elderly and disabled, it’s an obstacle.  For staff, it’s ridiculous- a waste of time and energy.  Being in a healthcare setting should be restorative not exhausting.  Think about how you organize departments, to minimize travel from one task/treatment area to another and about how you organize the facility to minimize travel times for joint clinics, and other modes/therapies.  You might want to consider having more multi-purpose or procedure rooms as well as larger workrooms for staff to allow services to come to the patient at a single point of care.  Healthcare institutions have to seriously factor distance into the equation and stop taking a “that’s the way it is” attitude towards expansion plans that increase travel distances or additions that create circuitous pathways.

 

I’ve discussed in a previous post on wayfinding that signage is no substitute for creating spaces that provide landmarks, zones, and mental cues to destination.  However, these wayfinding elements alone won’t fix the problem of bad spatial sequencing or poor adjacencies.  Wayfinding needs to be part of the conceptual planning of any new project, and may cause the scope of work to be tweaked to provide the most effective layout.  Until we embrace this simple fact, healthcare spaces will continue to overwhelm and confuse the people who use them-an opportunity to develop responsive design that is simply lost.

Be your next restoration/preservation project

“Creativity is as much about restoration as challenging yourself,” I thought one Sunday morning while feeling utterly weighed down by a bunch of stuff I had to do.  The creative mind is just not built to slog, yet as creative individuals we often get ourselves dug in so deep with our big ideas or constant ideation that slog we do.  I posted my thought on the Patron facebook page  and twitter the following day and was a bit surprised by how much that statement resonated.  In an interesting bit of synchronicity, I also happened to read posts on three other blogs that I follow with a similar theme.  Apparently it’s been a long spring.  I know it has for me.  Since February, I have been so busy between work, blogging for both this site and Urban Times, getting feng shui certified, and general life management (taxes anyone) that I feel as though I can barely come up for air.  So in the interests of opening the collective windows of our minds to let a little sunshine in, I have listed my top six personal restoration projects:

Recognize the difference between struggle and effort
As architects, we're no stranger to long hours.  But there is a difference between the creative effort that flows from us and the stuff that feels way to much like work.  Working in "the zone" can be incredibly energizing.  Feeling oppressed by your to-do list is a depleting struggle.  When we are in struggle mode, we feel that we have to burn the candle at both ends just to keep on top of things. If you are struggling, you are working hard, not smart and you should stop that right now. 

Fun is inspirational
Sometimes your best idea for a project may come from observing a food vendor at a carnival.  Not only does having fun provide us with restoration, it also gets our brains channeled in a different way- which is the very essence of creativity.  Here's how it works:  When you are noodling a design problem, you never really stop thinking about it, it lives in the back of your mind.  When your thoughts stop flowing (struggle mode) and you try to force them, the brain gets locked into a nonproductive static loop.  When you go do something else, your mind is free to play and suddenly you find yourself seeing parallels between the problem you are trying to solve and all kinds of (seemingly) incongruous things.

Put yourself on the schedule
Haven't had a haircut in months, got a knot of tension in your neck that you've been downing Advils like candy to work around?  You are ignoring self care.  Just as a building needs to be maintained, so does your body, mind and spirit.  When we put ourselves last, we operate from a mindset of depletion.  This restricts access to our creative flow, impacting the way we relate to our clients coworkers, even friends and family.  Grumpy, energy-sapped you is not necessarily even going to want to attend that industry lunch, let alone be a networking superstar who walks away with a pocketful of business cards.  Some of your best contacts can be those casual ones, like the woman you see each week at yoga, the manager of your salon, your dentist, the mother of your kid's play date.  Seek out and frequent restorative care and activities of all stripes and take the time to invest in your relationships there.

Abolish prerequisites
Perhaps it was the experience of taking college courses that got us here.  We so often feel that we have to choose between the things we would like to do and all the required activities of life. Chores (both at work and at home) are NOT a prerequisite to any other activity.  When it comes to work/life balance it's not "either/or", but "both /and." I personally struggle a lot with this one.  I find that it helps to plan to reward myself with at least one thing a day in order to keep my energy levels up and to try and take a break and switch gears whenever I catch myself getting stuck in the struggle.    

Ditch the victim within
When you feel diminished and small, that telegraphs in your actions and interactions.  Being expansive allows you to have a positive outlook, and channel your creativity.  It also draws others to you like a magnet.  That interaction with others in turn leads to more creativity.  Walk away from Victimville, home of oppressive depleting tasks and unrecognized effort and choose to empower your efforts.  Get the help you need to slog through the tasks that deplete or depress you, be selective in your commitments, seek out and ask for what contributes to your life and career goals.  Are you doing the work of your draftsman?  Ask yourself why you feel you need to do this: lack of trust in their work (fire or train them better), perfectionism on your part (done is better than perfect), or a way to avoid your own fears or hesitations on taking on creative challenges (take the leap).  If you truly find yourself drawn to chores when faced with a big project or challenge, think about why you are subconsciously choosing to be a victim of busy work instead of giving yourself permission to shine.  Then go do something fun instead of scheduling those fixtures. 

Be outcome focused
In a perfect world, we'd all live with such clarity of purpose that every action we took would be advancing that purpose.  In real life, we get distracted.  It's a lot easier to put effort into an activity when we understand how completing it will contribute to achieving a long or short term goal. Staying result-focused helps us get through the tedious work, because we can see where it ends.  It also helps us to trim the unnecessary activities we often take on because we assume we have to, but haven't fully thought through why. When you are outcome focused, you honor your own effort and the efforts of others.

Just like a building, our figurative paint can peel, our mental light bulbs need to be changed and our air needs to be circulated to keep from breeding mold spores.  We can also find that upon closer inspection, we need a little remodel of our lives to keep on track with our higher purpose.  Take on your life as your next project without fear of bold moves- making space is what you do.