A groundbreaking research effort produces universal symbols for health-care settings—and underscores the value of evidence-based design.
Patients, family members, and other visitors entering the doors of a hospital or other health-care facility face a daunting environment. Between them and their final destination, they will encounter a series of obstacles: multiple elevator banks, long and often identical-looking corridors, complex routes to distant departments or buildings, and often, ineffective wayfinding signage.
Fifty years after the publication of Kevin Lynch’s seminal book, his vocabulary and human-centered approach are still shaping urban design and wayfinding.
In my junior year in college, I took a correspondence course in urban geography from Penn State. As I read the textbook in the basement boiler room of an old elementary school (my summer job cleaning and fixing boilers was actually ideal for taking a correspondence course), I discovered an author who would forever change my perceptions about urban planning and design.
Corbin Design (Traverse City, Mich.) President Mark VanderKlipp earned his accreditation in Evidence-Based Design through the Center for Health Design. His certification brings Corbin Design into a community of healthcare administrators, practitioners, planners, architects, interior designers, and others committed to achieving real-world results in the design of healthcare environments.
With more than 19 million visitors per year, downtown Indianapolis is experiencing dramatic growth. A number of cultural, sporting and governmental venues are generating significant interest in the downtown, but the competing signs leading to these venues were generating confusion.
To anyone who lives there, or even those who have visited, it's obvious that the words "Los Angeles" and "walks" don't belong together. The great auto city was designed to connect freeways and move people in and out quickly, with very little concern for pedestrians or the walking experience.
All that may be changing thanks to Downtown Los Angeles Walks, an ambitious wayfinding/marketing program that is encouraging tourists and Angelinos alike to walk the city and discover its many destinations.
