HKS Wins Three 2025 Evidence-Based Design Touchstone Awards
HKS is the proud recipient of three 2025 Evidence-Based Design Touchstone Awards, granted by the Center for Health Design. Waco Family Medicine, Harris Health Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital and COVETM by DIRTT each earned Gold awards in the annual program that honors the best in research and outcome-driven design strategies.
“These three projects represent the best of what our talented researchers and designers at HKS are doing to positively impact peoples’ health through design,” said Jason Schroer, HKS’ Global Sector Director, Community. “These Touchstone Gold Awards are a testament to HKS’ longstanding leadership in evidence-based design.”
For Waco Family Medicine, HKS designed a 143,000-square-foot building that doubles clinical space at the system’s Providence Drive campus. HKS planned and designed the project with guiding principles that support patient-centered, affordable community health, foster staff joy, and advance education and research across the clinical spectrum. The team used evidence-based approaches to identify design needs and validate design choices, inspire innovative solutions, enhance functionality and efficiency and ensure stakeholder buy-in, serving as a partner to Waco Family Medicine throughout the entire process.
COVE by DIRTT is designed to evolve the way care is delivered in the emergency department by optimizing square footage without compromising function or patient, care partner and staff experience. COVE is a modular pod roughly half the size of a traditional exam room, allowing for a higher number of low-acuity patients who can be treated. Developed over the course of several years using evidence-based design, the project exemplifies how continuous improvement and innovative thinking can lead to improved design, efficiency and comfort in emergency settings.
HKS’ design for the Harris Health Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital expansion is to improve health through education, discovery and health care delivery. The expansion addresses service gaps and provides more outpatient services including psychiatric care, behavioral health services, cancer care, heart and stroke care, and allows surge capacity in inpatient units. An integrated team of HKS designers and researchers led evidence-based design efforts, including workshops and mockups with project stakeholders to develop layout and medical planning strategies that enhanced safety, efficiency and patient and staff experience in the hospital’s Emergency Center.
“We are incredibly honored to receive recognition from the Center for Health Design for our commitment to infusing research into our design processes,” said Deborah Wingler, HKS’ Global Practice Director, Applied Research. “These projects are powerful examples of how such efforts can truly improve the experience of people who use the spaces we design, and in turn, enhance community health.”
“These projects are powerful examples of how such efforts can truly improve the experience of people who use the spaces we design, and in turn, enhance community health.”
Deborah Wingler,
HKS’ Global Practice Director, Applied Research
HKS celebrated these awards during a ceremony at the 2025 ASHE International Summit & Exhibition on Health Facility Planning, Design & Construction in Atlanta, GA, where several colleagues presented on a wide range of topics in health care design including climate resilience and sustainability, technology and automation and mitigating nurse burnout.
