Highlight: SEGD Well Healthcare Innovation Workshop
Giving Thanks at Mercy Health
At this Cincinnati health network, the message of compassionate care permeates the healing environment, from architecture to signage and donor recognition. Learn more about Mercy Health and how they're innovating the patient experience at SEGD Well: Healthcare Innovation Workshop March 20-21 in Cincinnati!
For hospital systems like Mercy Health, a 160-year-old and growing health network based in Cincinnati, one of the most effective ways to communicate its mission of compassionate care is through its healing environments. In many of Mercy Health’s 80 locations, architecture, interiors, and signage combine to create a lasting impression of its brand values of care, advocacy, respect, and community service.
Kolar Design (Cincinnati) in collaboration with Madison Design Group (Mercy’s Cincinnati-based branding and design consultancy) developed a comprehensive signage and donor recognition program for Mercy Health’s new West Hospital, a 250-bed, 625,000-sq.-ft. facility that includes centers for maternity care, cancer, heart, orthopedics, and women’s health.
“The program helps us shape the Mercy Health brand strategy to communicate in the healing environments and connect with patients, their families, and donors,” says Kelly Kolar, principal of Kolar Design. “Mercy Health knows that its spaces are a reflection of its mission, values, and what it strives to achieve—understanding mind, body, and spirit.”
The communication begins as soon as visitors enter the hospital’s main concourse, where a luminous media wall and sculpture recognizes donors to the hospital’s capital campaign.
Part of the comprehensive signage and donor recognition system that is integrated throughout the hospital, the “living wall” was designed to capture the essence of the Mercy Health experience and celebrate its 160-year history, says Joell Angel-Chumbley, Kolar’s design manager.
The 24-foot-long wall combines digital storytelling—looping videos of the hospital’s history and donors—with edgelit acrylic tiles bearing donor names. Designed to create visual impact in a transitional space, the wall “visually has no beginning or end,” notes Kolar. Videos transition from black and white to color, telling Mercy Health’s legacy story through “visual poetry.”
--A tour of the new West Hospital donor recognition and signage program will be part of the SEGD Well: Healthcare Innovation Workshop in Cincinnati March 20-21, 2014.
MERCY HEALTH - WEST HOSPITAL
Client: Mercy Health
Location: Cincinnati
Signage and Donor Recognition Design: Kolar Design
Branding Consulting and Design: Madison Design Group
Architecture/Interiors: AECOM with Mic Johnson (lead designer)
Architect of Record: Champlin Architecture
Fabrication: Ad-Ex International (donor wall), AVI (donor wall systems integration), Holthaus Lackner Signs (signage)
Photos: Joe Harrison, JB Photography Inc.
