LAWRENCE — The essential thought is to realize a triple victory: revive the dying foremost streets of small cities by concentrating state-of-the-art medical care and different service suppliers there, not solely providing therapeutic companies for residents' our bodies, however serving to them really feel properly . higher psychologically.
In an article titled “Designing an Environmental Prototype to Enhance the Well being of Rural Communities,” Kent Spreckelmeyer, professor on the College of Kansas College of Structure and Design, and Tom Trenolone, KU 2000 alumnus and design director from the Nebraska-based faculty of structure and engineering. The HDR conglomerate describes the concepts they first got here up with for a small-town consumer a decade in the past. Since then, the plan has received awards, and its ideas have been broadly adopted within the business.
His work was printed within the 2024 problem of Oz, the journal of the Faculty of Structure, Planning and Design at Kansas State College.
“The concept was that it wouldn't simply be a traditional crucial entry hospital for a rural group, however that it could be an financial catalyst,” Spreckelmeyer mentioned. “It will be a group useful resource… linked to group redevelopment. HDR had a buyer in japanese Colorado who mentioned, 'Let's experiment with that and see how far we will go.' And since then, HDR has been making use of a few of these primary ideas to a lot of the agricultural well being care it has been offering.”
The essential thought is to take dispersed sources and produce them collectively within the heart, attaining crucial mass. The design that Spreckelmeyer and Trenolone drew up for Haxtun, Colorado, reveals a reuse of a number of Most important Avenue buildings, tearing down some underused adjoining buildings and erecting new buildings of their place.
“The analysis a part of this challenge was to return and outline what well being actually means,” Spreckelmeyer mentioned. “The unique federal well being invoice, the Hill-Burton Act, was supposed to (create amenities) for appendicitis, childbirth and primary medical points, not like what occurs now, when rural well being is outlined by deaths by melancholy, despair, and rising well being disparities. when it comes to well being outcomes (in comparison with cities) and in addition simply the shortage of sure easy issues like, the place do you get a cup of espresso in a small city in the event you don't wish to go to the fast retailer and purchase it in a cup foam? ? Is there someplace to go? So the thought was: May a hospital cafeteria be mixed with a cafeteria on Most important Avenue? How would that work?
Spreckelmeyer mentioned that whereas Haxtun didn’t, in the long run, radically renovate its downtown, “a number of little items that got here out of this have been integrated, not simply by HDR, however by a reasonably large variety of corporations specializing in rural healthcare. The design has used them.”
Spreckelmeyer mentioned Ounceshas all the time had a regional focus, and given the healthcare focus of the final version, his editors reached out to him and Trenolone to put in writing their work utilizing this new strategy to crucial entry care, which is the present state. subsequent era time period for rural well being amenities.
“A number of rural communities are starting to implement concepts like this as they transfer from a former Hill-Burton hospital to a brand new crucial entry hospital,” Spreckelmeyer mentioned. “Hospital techniques within the technique of changing their present well being care amenities are starting to ask basic questions concerning the nature of rural well being and the way it matches into the broader problems with group well being: What number of of these amenities can we mix collectively, in place to construct? Two separate establishments in a really low density group? How may you leverage these totally different actions for a number of companies? …Is there a group pool? If that’s the case, may we mix that with a hydrotherapy pool for the older inhabitants of the group? “I feel these sorts of questions have develop into fairly customary now as a part of architectural follow in rural settings.”