Joined-up design.
Our practice is built on the philosophy of joined-up thinking, and joined up design. We typically start with art, and then expand outwards — designing colour, wayfinding, materials, furniture, lighting, sculpture, interior design, and digital experiences — combining them into a holistic environment. The crucial point is that all elements are integrated: they embed into the architecture, and they harmonise together, creating a sense of unity.
So, what does that look like?
Let’s start with Beaconsfield, Older Person’s Ward, Hillingdon. This Art in Site project features illustrations of everyday home objects, that appear above bedheads. These are rendered in vivid colours, which harmonise with their surroundings. The trunking walls, cabinets, and wayfinding signage are all coordinated together. The room feels ordered, logical, and whole. Even the most mundane of things — like the cabinet doors — become elevated and beautiful in this context.
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Stepping from one room into another, a patient encounters a new colour palette. A spread of greens in one space, pink in another, and so on. Not only does this make the whole department more engaging and satisfying to explore, it also addresses major issues around orientation: patients here have mid- to late-stage dementia, and this makes it very difficult to read and navigate using signs. Fortunately, the artistic-colour-coded rooms are a huge help. A patient need only recall that “my bed” is in the green zone, or that I “live” under the bunch of roses to navigate back to their bedside.
So, integrated environments like this can help to solve emotional and functional problems. But how impactful can this really be?
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Making a “phenomenal difference”.
The impact can be huge. An independent post occupancy study looked at the effect of our integrated artwork for Adults’ Emergency, St Thomas’ Hospital, and found results including improved patient flow, and reduced anxiety, violence & aggression:
“The bold design across the public and private areas has made a phenomenal difference to people‘s experience of A&E. The clarity of colours, consistency of design, and excellent information slices help staff and patients understand the different areas within the department... the artwork is one of the reasons we are seeing reduced violence and aggression.”
Dr Simon Eccles, Chief Clinical Information Officer for Health and Care, DHSC, NHSE, NHSI
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So how did an integrated approach help to achieve all that?
We started thinking about a typical A&E journey from the patient perspective. As research from the design council showed, the typical visit to A&E can be disorientating, and confusing. A cluttered environment, jargonistic language, mismatched colours, and illogical decorations all contribute to unease, anxiety, anger, and even aggression. A huge part of the solution is to break the journey into simple, inspiring milestones and offer the right reassurance and information at the point of need.
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We worked with artist Vahram Muratyan, who is renowned for distilling complex ideas into charming, elegant works of graphic simplicity. He created a library of graphic assets that evoke the local area — bikes, the houses of parliament, buses, benches... We matched these to particular areas, helping to create a more intuitive, familiar journey: Big Ben appears at the entrance to majors, a bus indicates that you’ve arrived at X-ray, and so on.
So how does this transform the emergency experience? The journey is no longer complex. It’s easy to follow. Patients look at a map, establish their destination — eg. the Big Ben/Green area — and find their way there using visual signs and artwork in their environment. When they arrive at key places — eg. entrances, rooms, wait areas — they are provided with “infoslices” — beautiful, eye-catching strips of information that help to explain the who, what, where, and why in simple, jargon-free language. This is art and wayfinding fully integrated together, working together. And it does wonders:
“The zoned colour scheme helps patients orientate themselves within the department — and makes it easier for them to tell friends and relatives where they are. The artwork has made the department feel like we have a clear visual identity — a set of deliberate choices about how we appear to patients and relatives, which is confident, clean, and well coordinated.”
Service Manager, Adults’ Emergency
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Less a hospital, more a cathedral?
We believe the places which deal in life, death, care, hope, and recovery should be a reflection of their profound purpose. Here’s an example:
We worked with Turner prize nominee David Tremlett to integrate art at New QEII — an amazing community hospital built by Penoyre & Prasad.
Tremlett produced a large scale mural that adorns the atrium walls up to the ceiling, and throughout the upper gangways and corridors. This is art integration on a massive scale, and it totally transforms the welcome experience. Simply put, it doesn’t feel like entering a hospital. It’s more like entering a magnificent, playful cathedral of health.
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As you walk through the building, new sightlines open up — revealing the many facets of the architecture and the art working together. As you travel upwards even to the building’s top floors, the artwork continues to accompany you, like a friendly, caring presence.
When he visited this hospital, the art critic Richard Cork has this to say:
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“Most people who enter a modern hospital are bound to feel apprehensive, or even downright frightened by the clinical institution confronting them... Tremlett adopts a playful attitude to hospital’s walls and transforms them with a dynamic array of circles and rhomboids. Art is able to humanise a hospital, infusing an impersonal environment with a much-needed affirmation.
Art can speak to us with enviable directness, and hospitals fully deserve to become a special focus for its power.”
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So, in summary an integrated approach to art has special “powers”.
It can:
- Bring a sense of order and beauty to environments
- Help transform expectations from apprehension and dread to reassurance, trust, awe
- Help to simplify a complex process into something visual and relatable. This is even more relevant for those who may have difficulties reading signage — children, dementia patients, those in shock, non-native visitors etc.
- Break the vicious cycle of anxieties and fear, which can lead to knock on effects like violence and aggression to staff/ long term phobias, which put even more long pressure on services
- Establish a connection to human craft and empathy. It can evoke the feeling of special place — where people and dwellings are loved and cared for.
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