Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center | Design Leadership | 2016

David’s team collaborated with Perkins Eastman as they developed programming, architecture, and interior design services for Memorial Sloan Kettering’s David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care. This is currently the largest healthcare development at 750,000 square feet, The Koch Center will focus on innovative outpatient treatment programs, academic bioscience research, and high-tech learning through simulation labs.
To capture the aspirations of innovation for the future of cancer care, the façade is an articulating assemblage of ‘modules’ based on the structural grid and consisting of terra cotta panels and glass infill. The use of opaque and transparent materials deliberately evokes the contrast between the known and the unknown. Vertical terra cotta fins of varying depths provide shading, reduce solar heat gain, and control glare, while providing an interior environment with an abundance of natural light and expansive views of the East River.

In addition to the building design, David’s team focused on designing for all future clinical workspaces and global patient navigation. First, to develop the future for all MSK clinical workspaces, David developed two key components for design and construction: future-proofing for flexibility + adaptability, and facilitation of collaboration. These principles have been integrated into spaces for ancillary staff, clinicians, and physicians.

Through comprehensive ethnographic research of behaviors and a clinical needs assessment of space and team dynamics, David developed work typologies — systematic classification of individual differences and needs — for clinical staff. For ROI, research has shown that the better a clinician is treated, the better a patient is treated. Additionally, clinicians working in fully adaptable workstations reported greater satisfaction with ergonomics, less work-related pain and discomfort, more control over their environment, and better communication with coworkers. The team’s ergonomic system came out ahead by delivering greater customer satisfaction with agent performance, fewer lost workdays, and lower workers’ compensation costs.

Spatial needs consider the number and type of job functions, plotted against the required access to a resource. Dynamics is a function of the amount of collaboration exhibited, plotted against the tendency for migration. David’s team’s research also found that teams have different needs that correlate with the desire to differentiate between personal and relational workspaces. The research found that each position requires specific objects, workspaces, and proximities to function efficiently and with the highest job satisfaction.

Collective Intelligence exists and the design team leveraged spatial elements to define the best forms to suit the working teams. The project has been wildly successful with every new clinical workspace in The Koch Center developed and built to increase collaboration by increasing each team’s C-Factor. Additionally, my team piloted a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) ecosystem leveraging global Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN) at our Westchester, NY campus.

Additionally, what was needed was an affirmative way-finding narrative supporting a patient’s experience through her or his physical and healing journey. This can be achieved by communicating a message of progress, hope, and personalization. David created a system that supports universal navigation across the system, provides a hierarchy of information to users on how and when they need it, and gives staff tools to provide the best patient experience possible. Patient and clinician response has been overwhelmingly positive, and these design principles informed a system-wide navigation system deployed at all sites of care.