Introduction

My inspiration for selecting the healthcare and wellness field for my senior capstone project came from a few places. First of all while in the Interior Design Program at LSU we have not yet done a healthcare project and I thought it would be beneficial to my portfolio, especially since I am considering going into the healthcare field. Also, while working at Bradley-Blewster & Associates, who mainly specializes in healthcare design, I have become interested in healthcare design and knew I wanted to use this as my senior project. I also felt that if I used healthcare as my senior project I would learn a lot during the process. When trying to decide on what to do my project on, I remembered my Aunt a few years ago and how she had to go through the terrifying battle of breast cancer and eventually undergoing a double mastectomy. Five years later and she is still here, a breast cancer survivor.
After researching more about breast cancer I learned that one in eight women in the United States develop some form of breast cancer over their lifetime, and it’s one of the leading causes of death in women over 40. It is for these reasons and so many more, that I wanted to create comprehensive Women’s Center designed to give women the education, screening, diagnosis, treatment and support they need while doing so in a spa-like atmosphere. This Center will also offer more than just medical treatment; I wanted to give women caring on every level- emotional, spiritual and physical. For this reason the Center will offer a State of the art Fitness Center with Personal Trainers, Pilates, Yoga, an Indoor Track & Pool, Therapy Services, Counseling, Nutritional Counseling, a Spa, Meditation Rooms and much more. This center will give women the hope they need by providing them with traditional healthcare services as well as non-traditional services to take their mind off of the pain and suffering they are going through as well as chances to socialize with other women who are going through the same thing and make bonds that will last a lifetime.
The concept of the Center will be to create an environment inspiring feelings of physical well-being and mental peace. I will achieve this by combining soothing neutrals with warm pops of color, curvilinear shapes and organic forms to add interest, water features and natural light and outdoor views to reinforce relaxation and healing. During my project my focus will be to use Evidence-Based Design as a guideline to design the space. Evidence-Based Design is an approach to healthcare design that gives importance to design features that impact patient health, well-being, mood, and safety, as well as staff stress and safety. The approach focuses on the relations between the quality and the features of the hospital environment and the patient healing.
The design scope for this project includes finishing all three levels of floorplans with furniture, reflected ceiling plans, building sections, perspectives, specifications of finishes, materials, furnishings and equipment, and documenting all steps taken to follow the Evidence-Based Design process.
The client and owner of the building is Amber Ropas. Wendy, Amber’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, and unfortunately lost her battle two years ago. After seeing her mother go through her fight, Amber wanted to do something in her mother’s honor. Amber has been a successful entrepreneur based in Baton Rouge since she was 19 and gives credit to her success to her mother’s willingness to always lend a helping hand when she needed it and encourage her that she could do anything. Amber wants to build the Centre to instill her mother’s memory forever and to help give other women hope, support & encouragement during their time of need.
The building chosen is located at 11100 Mead Road, in Baton Rouge. Currently it is a three-story office building for IBM with an attached one story boiler room constructed in 1975 that is 51,878 sq. ft. I chose this building because it is conveniently located right off of the interstate near Sherwood Forest and sits on 4.98 acres with professional landscaping and has large floor to ceiling windows around each floor to take advantage of daylighting.