Federico Del Priore of Perkins Eastman argues that a hospital succeeds when it can absorb change and serve its neighborhood. He explains how patient, staff and material flows shape the plan, and why early contractor input helps.

Federico Del Priore, Studio Leader, Principal, Perkins Eastman

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In this conversation

Federico's idea of giving a hospital's ground floor to the neighborhood and the park, adding public value with little or no added cost.

How a New York campus project took inpatient beds in space meant for ambulatory care, and why he treats that flexibility as a measure of success.

Why he counts a great building delivered through a miserable process as a failure, and how he checks in with clients along the way.

How the flows of patients, staff and sterile materials set entrances, support spaces and wayfinding, down to a window at the end of a corridor.

His attention to clinician burnout, including places for staff to step offstage or make a personal call mid-shift.

Why he sees early contractor involvement through progressive design-build and IPD as a growing trend that clients rarely abandon once they try it.

The ground floor is not the hospital's floor, the ground floor is the neighborhood's floor, it's the park floor, it's the campus's floor.

Federico Del Priore

Chapters

Lofty ideals, real constraints

Why architecture carries a professional responsibility, and how a hospital can give back to the block around it.

How to measure success

Post-occupancy data, room to absorb change, a good process and direct user feedback on mockups.

Designing for patients and staff

Flexible infrastructure, the patient journey and spaces that help clinicians recover during a shift.

Starting from the flows

How the movement of people and materials shapes the plan, and the tools he uses from Excel to Revit and Rhino.

Leading teams and winning work

A day managing large teams, and why the best work comes from clients who treat you as an advisor.

Bringing the builder in early

How design-build and IPD speed projects, and the kindergarten block house that started it all.

If the end product was great but the process was a bear, and people say they're never going to do that again with you, that is clearly a failure.

Federico Del Priore

Takeaways

A hospital's ground floor can belong to the neighborhood and park, adding public value with little or no added cost.

Built-in redundancy let one New York project put inpatient beds into space meant for ambulatory use, which he counts as a measure of success.

A great building delivered through a miserable process is still a failure if the client never wants to work with you again.

Hospital planning starts from the flows of patients, staff and sterile materials, which set entrances, support spaces and wayfinding.

Early contractor involvement through design-build and IPD speeds projects, and clients who try IPD often use nothing else afterward.

A measure of success is that the building is built and it can actually take on changes.

Federico Del Priore