Three Workplace Designs that Elevate the Employee Experience

February 4, 2025

Three Workplace Designs that Elevate the Employee Experience

By Kate Davis

---

Share

Good design has the power to energize the workplace and make it a destination where people thrive personally and professionally. Whether employees are collaborating, working independently, or convening for events, they deserve environments that help them feel their best and enable them to do their best.

HKS designers, strategists and researchers create workplaces that elevate the employee experience. With industry-leading insights on how workplaces can be crafted to support brain health and how people — not workstations — should be the focus of office design, our teams craft spaces that respond to what employers and employees want and need.

These three workplaces are designed to provide dynamic experiences for employees today and into the future:

Gen Silicon Valley Hub Site

A global leader in cyber safety, Gen has a new workplace that embodies the spirit and mission of the company and provides a one-of-a-kind experience for employees. The workplace supports collaboration and can flex to meet the daily needs of Gen employees, and includes concierge and virtual concierge, a coffee bar, a tech bar, and an open auditorium setting with a stage. HKS’ interior design includes experiential branding and features with blue hues correspond to the Gen brand and create a welcoming atmosphere. Biophilic elements such as green walls, woodgrain paneling and large windows with views of nature support well-being among the digitally-driven organization’s teams.

• 

  Project

  Gen Silicon Valley Hub Site

  Read More

Duff & Phelps

For Chicago-based Duff & Phelps, HKS strategists and commercial interior designers partnered with the boutique investment firm’s real estate team to choose a site for their new office, ultimately landing on a building in the heart of downtown with views of the Chicago River and the city’s famed historic architecture. HKS designers then incorporated these surroundings into the workplace’s interiors with custom wall graphics and finishes that echo early skyscraper designs and the city’s urban planning scheme. The workplace — which includes a library, coffee bar/drink den, and other amenity spaces — is designed to encourage colleagues to spend time with one another. The project is Fitwel-certified and includes healthy materials and biophilic design elements to enhance employee well-being.

• 

  Project

  Duff & Phelps

  Read More

HKS Singapore

Our new HKS Singapore workplace elevates the employee experience of colleagues here at HKS. The space opened in late 2024 and is designed to reflect the evolving identity and ambitions of Singapore employees, promote well-being and serve as a catalyst for innovation. Located in a 1920s-era building, the workplace prioritizes sustainability and adaptability. It includes various spaces ranging from interactive zones to quiet retreats that support various work styles and enable employees to thrive in focused and collaborative tasks, and its design was driven by brain healthy workplace principles. HKS commissioned local artists to create murals that provide inspiration and echo the energy of the highly creative Singapore team members, who are already reporting higher levels of satisfaction and well-being in their new space.

• 

  Project

  HKS Singapore

  Read More

What’s Next?

In an ever-evolving modern workplace, design has a crucial role to play in supporting an organization’s most important assets — its people. With thoughtful, creative strategies, HKS strives to create beautiful places where employees feel well and thrive at work.

• 

  Service

  Interior Design

  Read More

Brett Shwery

Related Content

Office

Los Angeles

Service

Interior Design

Duff & Phelps

Project

Duff & Phelps A sophisticated office to support a hybrid workforce

---

Share

The Challenge

Boutique investment firm Duff & Phelps wanted to celebrate 90 years in business by creating a workplace that reflects their legacy of trusted reliability, showcases their competitive edge in the Midwest financial market and affirms their status as a global finance leader.

Duff & Phelps’ decision to invest in a new office aligned with their embrace of a hybrid work schedule. The firm sought a refreshed office environment to attract and retain top talent, encourage employee interaction and support peak staff performance. The project targeted Fitwel certification, an international standard for buildings that enhance health and well-being.

The Design Solution

HKS strategists, researchers and designers partnered with Duff & Phelps’ real estate team to choose a site for the new office. The extensive site selection process included a leadership alignment and visioning session to identify and prioritize the attributes Duff & Phelps wanted in the new office. One of the most influential outcomes of the session was a discussion about desired workplace amenities. This discussion set expectations that the new office location and building should deliver many amenities that Duff & Phelps might otherwise have been expected to provide directly in their leased office space.

With ideal future state criteria and design priorities in hand, HKS completed initial assessments of three locations brought forward by Duff & Phelps’ real estate broker. These assessments allowed the firm to compare options based on their project vision and goals.

Duff & Phelps ultimately selected a LEED-Gold certified building in downtown Chicago with views of the Chicago River. The building provides access to a gym and is within walking distance of world-renown outdoor spaces such as Chicago’s Riverwalk and Millennium Park. To support Duff & Phelps’ hybrid work policy and help make it simple for suburban-based employees to come to the office, the site is easily accessible via highway and commuter rail.

To impart a distinctive sense of place, the office interiors celebrate the energy and history of Chicago. Unique elements include custom wall graphics that showcase the region, as well as black metal details that reference the early designs of skyscrapers, which originated in the city.

Each corner of the workplace features a shared amenity that enables coworkers to connect with one another and experience extraordinary views. The library, coffee bar/drink den, break area and reception spaces are designed to encourage people to spend time with their colleagues and enjoy daylight, hydration, nutrition and wellness stations.

The 21,000 square-foot (1,951 square-meter) workplace includes 61 offices and seven workstations to support future growth at the firm from 50 employees to 68. Duff & Phelps elected to provide private offices to accommodate functional, role-based needs and prioritize employee productivity. The offices feature clear glass fronts to demonstrate transparency, democratize views and promote increased staff interaction.

Healthy materials and biophilic design elements that evoke the natural world helped the project achieve Fitwel certification. In addition, HKS worked with Duff & Phelps to implement green purchasing and cleaning protocols at the firm and improve employee access to fresh food, respite areas and adaptable spaces.

The Design Impact

Duff & Phelps’ new workplace communicates stability and sophistication. The office design also champions sustainability and wellness.

By developing a clear vision and workplace strategy, the project team was able to move swiftly through the site selection process and begin working on office design.

Within a year of moving into the new workspace, Duff & Phelps was recognized by Crain’s Chicago Business as one of the “Best Places to Work in Chicago.”

Emily Mernick

Related Content

Office

Chicago

Service

Interior Design

Gen HQ and HKS Singapore Featured in BD+C’s 15 Amenity-Rich Office Projects for 2025

FDA “Home as a Health Care Hub” Idea Lab

Lilypad™ VR Prototype: Sean

A preview of the Lilypad™ virtual reality (VR) prototype, which offers an immersive experience of a persona journey inside an affordable home, highlighting the daily challenges and barriers of managing diabetes. 

Home as a Health Care Hub Framework

Future of Connected Care in the Home: Living Room

Cleveland Browns’ Stadium Design ‘Truly Transformational’ for NFL

Hospital Fronted by Large Winter Garden Opens in UK

Dallas’ Lincoln Property Co. And HKS Partner With Cleveland Browns on Stadium-Anchored Entertainment District

HKS Singapore

Project

HKS Singapore A vibrant, sustainable, creative workplace

Singapore

---

Share

UC San Diego’s Newest Living and Learning Neighborhood: Eighth College, a 1.4mm Sqft Sustainable Vision for Student Living

Josie Briggs

Related Content

Office

Seattle

Service

Interior Design

HKS’ Chin Lim and Kay Curtis Win Honors From the Brit List Awards 2024

Creating an Impression: Midlands’ Massive Hospital

HKS Partners with IOA and ROAM to Design Anya Chair for Health, Hospitality and Commercial Environments

October 4, 2024

HKS Partners with IOA and ROAM to Design Anya Chair for Health, Hospitality and Commercial Environments

By Ana Pinto-Alexander

---

Share

Our team at HKS, IOA health care furniture company and ROAM hospitality interior design studio joined forces to create a new seating option, Anya, that is well-suited to variety of environments – from hospitals to hotels.

As a health care interior designer, I’ve long been inspired by hospitality furnishings. Cleanability is essential in health facilities, but the features that make health care furniture cleanable can make it look hard and uninviting. When the COVID-19 pandemic began to unfold, I saw people becoming more concerned about cleanliness in all sorts of environments, beyond health facilities. I wanted to build a team of designers with diverse expertise and set them loose to create a piece that combined the cleanability of health care furnishings and the softness of hospitality interiors.

I reached out to IOA President Fabio Delmestri to gather a team together – remotely – to design something that would work well and look inviting in almost any environment.

The Anya design team brought a range of experience to the project, to craft a piece that is cleanable, comfortable, durable and beautiful. Available as a single lounge chair or love seat, Anya has a curving armrest and an 18-inch seat depth with multi-density foam for comfort, as well as clean-out spaces for ease of maintenance, inset legs and a 500-pound weight capacity.

The interdisciplinary team of designers included Adam Gregory, Director of Design, IOA; Nicholas Tedder, Design Director of HKS’ Health Interiors practice; Zach Weihrich, Project Interior Designer, HKS Commercial Interiors; and Elena Oatman, Senior Designer, ROAM.

The Anya design team reunited online recently to talk about their design process and inspirations, and the value of creative collaboration.

What did your team’s multidisciplinary expertise contribute to the design of the Anya chair?

Nicholas Tedder, HKS Health Interiors: As a team, we all come from different backgrounds, and we’ve all encountered different facilities. But as interior designers, we all observe how people use space. We see how spaces are utilized or not utilized, and that influences our perspectives on, say, how a hotel lobby is inhabited verses how a health care waiting room is used, or a corporate lobby or an education facility. And we want to make things better through product design and interior design.

Elena Oatman, ROAM: A multidisciplinary approach allows us to see the same piece of furniture in different ways, for different environments and settings. In hospitality we always must think about aesthetics and comfort, not just the functionality of the piece, which is also very important.

What ideas inspired your design for Anya?

Zach Weihrich, HKS Commercial Interiors: There was a lot of emphasis on humanity, on compassion, on empathy. The big starting point was: how could this chair meet people? How could this chair take care of people? That was a little bit of a different way to approach the design, rather than as just an object or function.

Oatman: We wanted to create a chair with soft curves, inspired by the organic shapes found in nature and the comforting embrace of a cocoon.

Gregory: We definitely see that in health care in general, if you put a curve on something rather than just a square arm, people are more likely to think it’s going to be comfortable and gravitate toward it. So, the curves were important. And multiple seating postures – this chair is not just a sit-up-straight chair. You can sit sideways and put your foot up and lean into the arm. It’s inviting and user friendly.

Tedder: We wanted to design something that would fit as comfortably in a health care setting as it would in a hospitality setting or a corporate setting. That idea really started to influence the shaping and the scale and some of the forms we considered.

There were a lot of parameters that we put together that influenced what we shaped: how it’s cleaned, the cut outs that are needed for a health care setting (for cleanability) versus how the arms are shaped for durability and accessibility. 

We also looked at the scale. We didn’t want to increase the footprint, but we want the chair to feel generous to people of different sizes. That played into the shape of the seat and the tilt of the back, and the design of the arms. We wanted to instill confidence, so that if someone looks at the chair, they know they’ll fit comfortably in it. That allowed us to beef up the legs and make them look really substantial and structural.

What was your collaborative design process like?

Tedder: We started out doing some internal visioning sessions around the idea of future needs. We also looked at what was happening in different markets, from fashion to furniture.

Weihrich: Those early brainstorming sessions were really neat because everybody was coming from different perspectives, but there were very clear through lines.

Gregory: We got everyone’s take on the direction we wanted to go, then we started on 3D digital models. Next, we narrowed it down to which sketch we liked and what scale we liked and started making samples. We probably made three or four full-on chairs. That’s where the pitch came in, and the leg size, just refining the overall shape.

Then we went into final mock-ups and prototypes. We started talking about the upholstery, stitch details, trying to figure out how to make the leg look like it was molded into the shape rather than just bolted on. I would take pictures of the physical model and hand sketch over the top so we could come up with the final lines.

Why are design partnerships important?

Weihrich: No one has the best ideas all the time. I always think about biodiversity – the healthiest ecosystems are the most diverse. There’s just so much benefit to everybody.

Gregory: As designers, we’ve all taken this path because we want to make things better. We want to make things easier and simpler and cleaner and more functional. When we all walk into a space, we each see different details and notice different things. That’s what we do – we see how people use things and figure out how to create new ones. Having so many eyes on this project was a big plus. Different approaches, different mindsets were really helpful. I think we meshed well as a team, and Anya turned out to be a great piece.

A New Generation’s Needs are Driving Student Housing Design

October 2, 2024

A New Generation’s Needs are Driving Student Housing Design

By

• Renae Mantooth, PhD
• Jeff Larsen

---

Share

As higher education enrollment rates climb, an urgent need for quality student housing is pervasive on college campuses. Along with the demand for more on-campus units and beds, learnings from the pandemic have caused universities to understand and prioritize the student experience differently. 

HKS education designers have created student housing environments on campuses large and small, resulting in more than 58,000 beds across the United States in an evolving higher education development landscape. Beyond simply delivering housing units, our teams conduct extensive pre-design and post-occupancy research and engagement efforts to create design solutions that provide what students really want and need in their living environments. 

To help us align with university partners on how to center the student experience and positive outcomes throughout the design process, our team has developed coalition research and a framework that comprises twelve student needs. 

Three of the most foundational student needs we’ve identified are privacy, socialization and comfort. These needs might seem basic in nature. But designers must intentionally create diverse spaces to fulfill these needs and contribute to each student’s well-being and sense of belonging. Our team implements design strategies that range in scale from the individual unit to the larger campus plan, so students can thrive personally and academically in their entire living and learning environment.

• 

  Story

  Space to Belong: Fueling Education Design with an Equity-Centered Approach

  Read More

By balancing efficiency and affordability with an elevated student experience in our design approach, we seek to create built environment solutions that support students’ varied and overlapping needs including — but certainly not limited to — privacy, socialization and comfort. 

Creating Options for Privacy in Student Housing Design

Every student arrives on campus with a different perspective on privacy. Some may come from households where they were the only child or where they had their own room, while others may come from larger families where they shared bedrooms or lived with intergenerational relatives. Prior living environments shape students’ expectations for privacy in their on-campus housing.  

Today’s student housing is increasingly designed with apartment and suite arrangements that provide students with more privacy and personal space than traditional residence hall models that feature shared bedrooms and common bathrooms and lounges on every floor. Universities and designers have adapted to meet the evolving needs and desires of today’s college students, understanding that providing more privacy in these intimate spaces can be better for students’ holistic well-being. However, shared rooms inherently enable socialization and can lead to many benefits, including decreased isolation and higher retention rates. For these reasons, we work with universities to balance their offerings.

Through our design research, we’ve learned that privacy isn’t something that can or should be limited to the design of bedrooms and bathrooms. Providing many options for how and where students can retreat within the larger campus goes a long way in enhancing their well-being, too.

One design strategy our teams have implemented to support privacy in projects such as UC San Diego Theatre District Living and Learning Neighborhood (TDLLN) are “Zoom” rooms. Online and hybrid learning hasn’t gone away since the pandemic eased, even though many classes are face-to-face for on-campus students. Students often collaborate with others or connect with professors remotely, and having private spaces in housing buildings for them to do so provides options for virtual, private connections.

At UC Davis’ Shasta and Yosemite Halls, which include a variety of small and mid-size lounge and study areas, our design research revealed that students are using the exterior bridges connecting each building to make private phone calls. The bridges are conveniently located down the hall from student rooms, and many students said they often stopped on the bridge to finish conversations before returning to the space they share with their roommate. This example demonstrates that privacy is something students want and need, and that can be found in unexpected places. However, the notion of “right-sizing” these shared spaces for increased utilization is key. As we learned in our post-occupancy study, the mere presence of a glass door can signal territoriality, limiting the number of students who use a shared space.

• 

  Project

  UC Davis Shasta and Yosemite Halls

  Read More

Enhancing On-Campus Socialization Opportunities 

While on-campus living is by nature a social experience, meaningful social relationships often take time, effort and energy for students to develop. Students have different approaches, expectations and needs when it comes to making friends. Some students move far from home for school and may not know anyone on campus, while others attend a school close to home, where they are more likely to know many fellow classmates. It’s important for us to tend to varying degrees of social relationships, so that we meet all the diverse needs of socialization — including those that happen online, one on one or in a group setting.

A student’s potential social relationships include those with roommates, floormates, others in their building or other on-campus residences and with the entire campus community at large. The design of student housing can help foster students’ abilities to forge and maintain bonds with others in ways that work for them.

We’ve learned that it’s important to provide spaces and furnishings that support different modes of gathering. Common rooms and lounges are a tried-and-true type of space in student housing buildings, but one or two areas intended for many different concurrent activities don’t always provide the right options from a socialization (or studying) standpoint. Similarly, a student bedroom with only a desk, chair and bed can’t fully support certain social activities like playing a board game or watching a movie together.

Every floor or wing on a student housing floor makes up a community comprised of residents supported by one resident assistant or advisor. The floor community is an extension of the more intimate roommate community, and we have learned the importance of expanding those scales of social networks and supporting them through design. 

On a current student housing project in Florida, our design connects pairs of floors with one stairwell and shared amenities.  This design strategy gives students the option to engage with a bigger social network, in addition to the suitemate and floor community. Providing more connections while still maintaining the smaller, more intimate aspects of a floor community provides a range of opportunities for socialization for students who may want different things in their housing environment. 

We have also been strategic about fostering social interactions among students who might not encounter one another daily. At TDLLN, we applied a concept of “functional inconvenience” where students gather in a central location for key amenities that they infrequently utilize, such as laundry and fitness facilities and a community kitchen. The intent is to design shared spaces at different scales and for different modes of interactivity that enhance students’ sense of belonging within their greater community.

Providing Choices for Student Comfort

Comfort is foundational in any living environment — our holistic well-being is enhanced when we feel comfortable and at ease in the places where we live. Just like with privacy and socialization, comfort is a need that looks and feels different for every student living on campus. Some students enjoy living environments that are open, where they can easily be surrounded by others and circulate to different spaces. Some students gravitate toward more private spaces where they can retreat. 

In today’s student housing, students and their families can often select from a range of options for suite and room arrangements, making choices based on comfort levels and affordability. Design strategies that support choices for comfort can be applied throughout student housing and campus environments, not just in bedrooms and suites. 

Our research has shown that providing choice and agency in a student housing environment contributes to student comfort. By designing spaces and incorporating features that provide comfort for students regardless of their activity, whether it be studying, socializing or relaxing, we provide more places where students can freely and comfortably live their lives. Even things as simple as self-operated thermostat and lighting controls can go a long way toward enhancing comfort.

Through planning discussions with school officials and student engagement efforts for a major housing project at UT San Antonio, we learned it is important for us to provide UTSA students with choice, to contribute to their overall comfort. The design includes a variety of unit options that expand the university’s housing portfolio and balance affordability with creating a dynamic, comfortable community for students. The building’s circulation is designed with single-loaded corridors so neighbors across the hall can’t see into each other’s rooms. This strategy was an intentional move to provide students with that next level of comfort in their living space.

The project also features permeable transition zones between the outdoors and shared amenities on the ground floor that offer a variety of sensory experiences and supply students with options for respite, socialization and climatic control. With flexible lounge seating and varied furniture options throughout, students can customize their shared environments for comfort.

Housing that Prepares Students for the Future

Successful student housing design prepares young people for different living situations as they continue through their academic life. While learning to advocate for personal needs is a part of the developmental experience of on-campus living, students who have a built environment that supports them can spend more time focusing on learning and building relationships than seeking places that fulfil their needs.

HKS education designers and researchers partner with universities to create such places — places where students can feel comfortable and safe, where they can have their needs met, be themselves and find a sense of belonging. Through collaboration and outcome-driven design, we create environments that shape memories in four of the most transformative years of students’ lives.

Empowering Patients: Memorial Cancer Institute

September 27, 2024

Empowering Patients: Memorial Cancer Institute

By

• Teresa Campbell
• Arthur Brito

---

Share

This story first appeared in the 2024 September/October Edition of Medical Construction & Design. It is reprinted here with their permission.

In Pembroke Pines, Florida, on a site where two defunct big-box stores once stood, is a new beacon of hope – Memorial Cancer Institute. The two-story luminous glass-and-precast building – highlighted by Memorial Healthcare System’s signature blue – welcomes people to the medical campus and communicates the health system’s strong presence in the area and commitment to the community it serves.

“Cancer patients can expect the best treatments, advanced clinical trials and expert physicians,” said Meredith B. Feinberg, Vice President of Oncology Services at South Florida-based Memorial Healthcare System. “But having an environment that supports their healing is also critical.”

The design gives cancer patients back a measure of control over their lives. According to Feinberg, spaces that help people feel empowered as they embark on a challenging health care journey are key to a positive cancer care experience. 

Welcoming, landmark building

The 21,000-square-foot outpatient cancer center, designed by HKS, is located next to Memorial Healthcare System’s Memorial Hospital West. The cancer institute offers advanced chemotherapy and cellular therapy treatment options, radiation therapy, surgical oncology specialties, a full array of advanced clinical trials, integrative medicine and support services that include a Center for Body, Mind and Spirit, a meditation sanctuary and a café with healthy food options. 

The HKS LINE (Laboratory for INtensive Exploration) innovation team helped create the building’s distinctive exterior, which features a variety of architectural precast concrete panels in assorted sizes and finishes, including some panels that are polished to provide visual interest and a subtle sheen. Timothy Logan, HKS Computational Applications Developer, formulated an algorithm to help determine the optimal layout for the panels, to avoid waste, minimize construction costs and maximize design impact. 

The project team used a 3D digital model of the building to visualize different iterations of the exterior and fine-tune the design. Once they finalized the design, the team produced drawings for custom molds the manufacturer used to form the precast concrete panels. 

Meeting community needs

The building’s bright, light-filled interior provides a patient environment that is soothing, efficient and easy to navigate. The design supports expanded services, future growth and Memorial Healthcare System’s partnerships with Florida Atlantic University and the Moffitt Cancer Center. 

The facility has 63 exam rooms designed for multidisciplinary cancer care teams, more than doubling the number of exam rooms (29) previously available for cancer care on the Memorial Hospital West campus. In addition, the building has 51 private infusion suites, up from 38. Shell space is being built out in the facility to create more infusion bays. The pharmacy and laboratory are sized to support additional patient volume. 

“We certainly had an eye toward growth,” said Feinberg. 

The master plan for the project includes a future inpatient cancer hospital that will integrate with the institute’s outpatient services, for enhanced patient support and clinical care. To support this plan, Memorial Cancer Institute is designed to expand horizontally, and the building program is arranged around a central atrium with a grand staircase that promotes physical activity, simplifies wayfinding and affords easy deconstruction for the expansion.

HKS and Memorial Healthcare System recently completed a successful vertical expansion of the health system’s Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood, Florida. The project team knew well the feasibility — and complexity — of building above an operational health facility. To minimize disruption and save time and money during a future expansion project at Memorial Cancer Institute, the team positioned the institute toward one side of the site, to allow room to build an adjacent patient bed tower.

Healthy air, healthy building

Memorial Cancer Institute is designed for operational efficiency and the well-being of patients, family members and staff.

The project team took a holistic approach to protecting the health and wellness of vulnerable people, which included maintaining high standards for interior air quality and reducing the toxicity of building materials. 

HKS’ interior design team created a material palette that minimizes harmful emissions from volatile organic compounds and persistent, bioaccumulative toxins. This approach is aligned with the requirements of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) for LEED certification. Memorial Cancer Institute’s LEED v4 certification is in process.

Designed for better flow

Because cancer patients can be physically and emotionally fragile, Memorial Healthcare System’s goal is to make their time spent in the building “as short as possible”.

“We spent a lot of time focused on patient flow and throughput so patients can get back to living their lives,” Feinberg said.

On the building’s first floor, centralized registration, blood draw and laboratory areas are designed to streamline processes, shorten staff walking distances and reduce waiting times for patients. A separate side canopy and entrance for the radiation oncology department helps patients whose treatment requires frequent trips to the cancer institute to get in and out quickly and feel more empowered when they visit.

The Center for Body, Mind and Spirit, also located on the first floor, offers a salon, prosthetic fittings, a boutique and massage therapy to help patients look and feel their best throughout their cancer treatment.

The institute’s 63 exam rooms are on the second floor, which also houses physician practices, a patient and family resource center and supportive services, such as palliative care, nutrition, psycho-oncology and social work.

The Breast Cancer Center, on the third floor, integrates breast medical oncology, breast-surgical oncology and breast cancer treatments in one location to provide a convenient, personalized approach to care. Breast cancer infusion bays are located within the center to improve care coordination and offer patients an extra measure of privacy. 

Infusion bays throughout the building are perhaps the best example of how the design supports individual choice and empowerment. Patients can control the lighting and temperature within each private infusion bay for increased comfort and reduced stress. All infusion bays are positioned on the building’s perimeter with views of nature and living things so patients undergoing treatment can feel a calming connection to life and the outdoors. Several infusion bays feature views of the institute’s expansive rooftop garden. 

Research shows that access to nature can improve well-being and aid in the healing process. To support this notion, the rooftop garden features meandering walking paths, lush greenery and shaded seating areas for patients, their families and cancer institute staff. Native plants and pollinators in the garden support local biodiversity and to minimize water runoff, the rooftop landscape is fortified with drought-resilient plants that can manage intense South Florida rainfall and storms.

The rooftop area also includes a café and a jewel box-like meditation sanctuary that supports multiple activities and therapies. Feinberg said she has seen patients and family members linger in the rooftop garden after a patient visit or treatment.

The institute’s grand opening was held in November 2023 and patients began receiving care at the facility in January of this year. The $125-million investment stands as a testament to Memorial Healthcare System’s dedication to advancing cancer care in South Florida for years to come.

North Torrey Pines Living & Learning Neighborhood Amongst Projects Leading the Building Decarbonization Charge