As promised in our September 2002 annual showcase issue, HEALTHCARE DESIGN has become a quarterly publication this year. You hold in your hands the initial result of a decision to publish three regular, magazine-style issues in addition to the annual September Architectural Showcase issue. Beyond show-casing exciting new projects, HEALTHCARE DESIGN is exploring the concepts, processes, and professional dialogue behind them. In some cases, we address not individual projects, but overriding issues that everyone in the field thinks about from time to time.

This inaugural number, for example, exposes you to some of the latest thinking on the relevance of “sustainability” to healthcare design. “Green design,” it turns out, is more than warm and fuzzy good intentions for those involved in this tough business. Explore further, and you’ll learn of the thinking that goes into the design of, for example, an all-encompassing nursing respite area and an “ideal” nursing unit. How might a mock surgical suite be put to use in design, and what does the sophisticated world of office design have to offer the healthcare facility? You’ll find answers here.

The “showcase” in our otherwise nonshowcase issue features two striking facilitiesNaval Hospital Bremerton (by NBBJ) and the Crozer Regional Cancer Center (by Ellerbe Becket)and gives you not only a visual tour, but their respective designers’ thoughts as they worked their way through the planning stages. You will find reflections from the guys who do the hands-on work (“The Contractor’s View”) and from the artists who create unique features that make hospitals special (“The Art Corner”). And you will find key product categories displayed in ways that satisfy the designer’s discerning eye (“Product Gallery” in this issue featuring floorcoverings).

You will even find some brave thinking about the future “brave” because healthcare poses particular challenges for planners trying their best to keep up with change. Notable futurists Wanda J. Jones, MPH, Jeff Goldsmith, and Russell C. Coile, Jr., offer their insights.

In this and subsequent issues, HEALTHCARE DESIGN hopes to capture your eye, arrest your thoughts, and free your imagi-nation. As conceived by our publishing staff and The Center for Health Design, here at last is a magazine that will give this burgeoning field the attention it deserves. Please let us know what you think, at rpeck@en.com. HD

RICHARD L. PECK, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF