Designing for Recovery
Healthcare facility design is shifting. What was once a purely clinical efficiency model now treats patient and staff wellness as a core design criterion.
Research has linked a hospital’s physical environment, especially decisions made early in the design process, to staff wellbeing, productivity and satisfaction. Factoring these elements in from the start can lead to better outcomes for patients, caregivers and healthcare organizations alike.
With deep experience in complex healthcare environments, the Skanska team has watched this shift unfold firsthand. Across its recent projects, the team has helped translate ambitious wellness goals into practical construction and material decisions. Three strategies grounded in biophilic and sustainable design continue to stand out across projects, namely daylight and access to nature, mass timber and high-performance building systems.
Letting the Outside In
Access to natural light and views is no longer treated as an amenity. It’s a core piece of patient-centered design.
Studies link natural light and connection to nature in healthcare settings to reduced patient stress and improved staff wellbeing. Design teams are prioritizing sightlines to nature from patient rooms, staff areas and circulation spaces, recognizing these benefits extend to caregivers as much as patients.
For builders, preserving those goals takes early coordination. Building orientation, glazing, shading, interior sightlines and access to outdoor space all need to be locked in before constructability and budgeting reviews chip away at them.
At UVA University Hospital South Tower, the bed tower’s geometry opens views in every patient room and staff breakroom to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Landscape-inspired interior graphics reinforce that connection indoors.
The same principle shaped site selection and campus layout at the Cordilleras Behavioral Health Facility. The project sits in a valley surrounded by open space and trails, with outdoor recreation areas and a community garden extending the connection further. The presence of local wildlife, including deer and wild turkeys, further enriches the site’s natural character.
Building With Mass Timber
Material selection plays a growing role in how healthcare facilities look and feel. Mass timber has emerged as an alternative to traditional steel and concrete construction and can bring warmth, texture and visual character to spaces like outpatient care facilities that might otherwise feel uniform.
St. Charles Cancer Center shows what that looks like in practice. As Oregon’s first modern mass timber medical facility, it uses 86 glulam beams and 30 cross-laminated timber panels to form the roof and second floor structure, alongside the traditional materials required for specialized cancer treatment spaces. Mass timber was also utilized in the infusion areas to create a calming, nature-centric patient care space. The project proves a hybrid structural approach can deliver the experiential benefits of timber without compromising technical performance or shielding requirements.
The benefits go beyond aesthetics. Prefabricated components can reduce onsite building time, and greater cost and schedule predictability make timber a practical structural alternative amid volatility in the steel market. Skanska explored these considerations further in its recent webinar, “Materials Matter: Mass Timber, Steel Costs and the Future of Construction.”
Healthcare projects also come with tighter site logistics than most other project types, from limited laydown space to restricted delivery windows to the need to maintain separation from active clinical operations. Prefabricating mass timber components offsite helps manage that complexity by cutting down onsite work and supporting a more efficient schedule.
Systems Built for Health and Comfort
The U.S. healthcare sector accounts for roughly 8.5% of the nation’s total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and its emissions grew 6% between 2010 and 2018, underscoring the opportunity for facilities to shrink their environmental footprint.
Sustainable, high-performance systems are no longer framed as a separate environmental goal. They’re increasingly seen as direct contributors to patient and staff experience.
Given their heavy energy demands, healthcare facilities, especially inpatient hospitals, are strong candidates for renewable and high-efficiency technologies like combined heat and power, biomass and geothermal systems. Onsite energy generation and water reuse are increasingly paired with strategies that improve comfort and resilience, not just back-end efficiency.
The Cordilleras Behavioral Health Facility is one of the first net-zero energy behavioral health Rooftop and parking canopy-mounted photovoltaic arrays deliver clean, sustainable energy while enhancing the facility’s overall environmental performance.
At UVA, that focus extended to water, with several green roofs that mitigate stormwater runoff. It also employs net-zero water design strategies that capture greywater for use in heating and cooling.
Together, these projects show how sustainable infrastructure can show up in ways patients, residents and staff experience directly, not just behind the scenes.
The Case for Integrated Healthcare Design
The most successful healthcare projects don’t treat wellness, sustainability and constructability as competing priorities. A growing body of research links biophilic design to better outcomes for patients and care providers that biophilic design improves outcomes.
Owners, designers, builders and clinical stakeholders need to collaborate early, understanding how decisions around orientation, materials, structural systems and infrastructure affect both project delivery and the people who use the space. Now it’s time to execute.
Skanska’s broader commitment to net-zero carbon emissions by 2045 across its operations and value chain reflects this same focus on resilient, high-performing buildings. As health systems weigh cost, sustainability and patient outcomes, these strategies are moving from exception to expectation.
Built in from the outset, they help create healthcare environments that support clinical care while feeling calmer, more humane and more connected to the natural world.
SEE ALSO: BUILDING HISTORY: THE NEW TEDDY ROOSEVELT PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY
