As we did in our December 2006 issue, HEALTHCARE DESIGN has decided to put a bow on the year that was by asking recognized architects, interior designers, and consultants in the field to nominate their peers whom they thought had made a significant difference in advancing the design of healthcare facilities. We invited them to name “stars” from their own companies, as well as from other companies who, despite possibly working for competitors, deserved this recognition. The next several pages will introduce you to 20 of these special professionals.

David Allison, AIA, ACHA

Professor/Director, Graduate Studies Architecture + Health Clemson University Ph: 864.656.3897

There is no debate that David has had a tremendous impact on the healthcare design profession over the last 25 years. As an architect, David is passionate in his role as an educator not only to his students in the graduate architecture program in healthcare studies at Clemson University, but to his professional colleagues nationally. He nurtures and challenges his students using a tremendous wealth of knowledge and experience to expose them to all elements and variables regarding the planning and design of healthcare facilities. He is a visionary leader using an interdisciplinary approach to research the impact the built environment has on patients, families and staff. He has only scratched the surface of the effect he will continue to have in the healthcare design field.

Nominated by: Kathy L. Bell, AIA, ACHA, The S/L/A/M Collaborative

Fred E. DeWeese

Vice-President, Facilities Planning & Development Vanderbilt University Medical Center Ph: 615.322.4266

Fred’s career spans more than 40 years. In his eight years at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), one of world’s leading teaching hospitals and medical research facilities, he has overseen an expansion of hospital and research facilities totaling $1 billion, the largest such expansion at VUMC in any eight-year period. Previously, he directed the $400 million expansion of Washington University’s School of Medicine. Fred, an architect, helps VUMC officials visualize how space can be built and utilized. He serves as liaison between the administration and the Board of Trust, translating expressed needs into brick and mortar. He possesses extraordinary creativity and problem-solving skills.

Nominated by: Ed Houk, AIA, Hart Freeland Roberts, Inc.

Tama Duffy Day, FASID, IIDA, LEED AP

Principal/National Interior Design Healthcare Practice Leader Perkins+Will Ph: 202.624.8366

Tama Duffy Day provides strong, thoughtful, and dedicated leadership internally to our healthcare practice and externally to our clients providing them with the highest level of service. In the forefront of healthcare design leadership, she is a Principal and the firm’s National Interior Design Healthcare Practice Leader. Through her inquiry and being involved in practice for the last 30 years, she has gained valuable insight, knowledge, and expertise on healing environments, and is someone who has truly made a difference to healthcare design.

Nominated by: Julie M. Eppinger and Kalpana Kuttaiah, Perkins+Will

Kristi Ennis, AIA, LEED AP

Director of Sustainable Design Boulder Associates Architects Ph: 303.499.7795

Kristi’s contributions to healthcare design include serving as healthcare project manager for the first LEED-certified hospital, which proved to the industry that sustainable design can be achieved in a healthcare setting, and as sustainable design coordinator for the first LEED-certified public safety-net hospital project, demonstrating that it can be incorporated into any budget. She is a national promoter of sustainability in healthcare, and is an implementer of sustainable design features into healthcare projects from coast to coast as the Director of Sustainable Design for Boulder Associates. She also serves as an instructor for the CSU Institute for the Built Environment and is a founding member of the US Green Building Council Colorado Chapter.

Nominated by: Erica Ferdani, Boulder Associates Architects

Nato Flores

President Tower General Contractors Ph: 818.768.3530

Since founding Tower General Contractors, Nato Flores has been involved in the design and construction of dozens of healthcare facilities in California. Those include the Los Angeles Red Cross office, five Arroyo Vista clinics, and the St. Benedict Alzheimer’s Unit at St. John of God Retirement, which is currently under construction. Mr. Flores has worked very closely with St. John’s to design an environment that will accommodate the special needs of Alzheimer’s patients. This includes easy navigation through hallways, as patients tend to become easily disoriented, and an open and airy facility to help patients who suffer from paranoia.

Mr. Flores understands that construction of any healthcare facility requires extreme sensitivity to other departments within a hospital or clinic, so as not to disturb the function, safety, and quality of care delivered by those units.

Nominated by: Alex Guerrero, Tower General Contractors

Brian Garbecki

Preconstruction Manager Healthcare Gilbane Building Company Ph: 617.478.3316

Brian Garbecki saw an opportunity in the healthcare preconstruction process: What if healthcare facility owners could see the cost implications of building decisions before their projects were off the ground? What emerged was the Healthcare Cost Advisor, an interactive program built entirely by Garbecki that helps facility owners develop accurate budgets in the early stages of project development. The tool allows Gilbane to work side by side with clients and architects to enter project-specific data and design criteria, then evaluate options on the spot to produce a virtual building with estimated total construction and project costs. Its accommodation of “what if” scenarios in real time has been used on several projects with great success.

Nominated by: Kristy dosReis, Gilbane Building Company

Anne Garrity

Senior Associate/Interior Designer Shepley Bulfinch Ph: 617.423.1700

As Shepley Bulfinch’s senior healthcare interior designer, Anne Garrity works with clients to transform healthcare interiors with art. Beginning art planning early in schematic design, she creates interiors that break down the institutional imagery of the hospital environment, making art a powerful counterpoint to “strong medicine.” She approaches healthcare interiors the way an artist approaches painting, with layers and planes of color, materials, and textures. Anne takes the traditional concept of soothing, nonchallenging art in hospitals and upends it, designing collections that speak meaningfully to patients, families, and staff in voices that are intellectually stimulating, uplifting, and relevant.

Nominated by: Garrold E. Baker, AIA, Shepley Bulfinch

Lyn Geboy

Director of Research and Education Kahler Slater Ph: 414.272.2000

Lyn Geboy, PhD, puts research into the hands of those who are making decisions about the design of healthcare environments. As the Director of Research and Education for Kahler Slater, a multidisciplinary architectural and design firm, Lyn works directly with architectural planners, interior designers, hospital administrators, and hospital staff to assist them in making evidence-based decisions that will positively impact healing environments.

Lyn is an author, consultant, and speaker on the topics of architectural research, healthcare facility design, and environments for the aging. Her work integrates concepts through multiple disciplines with a focus on demonstrating visible results.

Nominated by: Kate Taege, Kahler Slater

Paul Gilliland

President Wellness Environments Ph: 615.321.5052

As President of Wellness Environments, Paul Gilliland works with Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) to help them answer the greatest—and most basic—design challenge: how to pay for a new or renovated facility. While rural hospitals strive to deliver the same quality of care as their urban counterparts, their financial issues are unique. Paul’s efforts are enabling CAHs to build by designing innovative financial options, such as charging complete patient rooms to the equipment budget instead of the construction budget and leasing patient rooms like other medical equipment, and by creating an alliance of best-in-class healthcare professionals to deliver turnkey solutions.

Nominated by: Brenda Gardner, Wellness Environments

Thomas W. Gunn

President & CEO GunnLevine Architects Ph: 313.873.3861

Tom Gunn understands healthcare environments because for more than 33 years it’s been his passion. Tom uses a statistically based planning process when predicting the facility needs of healthcare environments. He uses activity ratio modeling—ratios of ancillary volumes to inpatient and ambulatory activity to forecast clinical and ancillary volumes. Using these planning methodologies, he was engaged by the Canadian Government to develop an “Evaluation and Space Programming Methodology Series” for each of the 30-odd divisions in healthcare for Health and Welfare Canada. Additionally, the Michigan Hospital Association (MHA) invited Tom to share his accumulated knowledge by teaching MHA senior planning staff. This intensive teaching role led to an engagement as a planning partner with MHA so that they could offer a wide range of facility master planning services to their client hospitals all over the state. Tom has completed more than 32 Master Plans and Programming Studies and more than 1,000 Renovation and Expansion projects.

Nominated by: Heather Kazmierczak, GunnLevine Architects

Monte Hoover

Chairman BSA LifeStructures Ph: 317.819.7878

Monte Hoover’s 30-year career in planning and designing medical facilities has helped advance his multidisciplinary design practice and advance healthcare design. Since joining BSA LifeStructures in 1984, Monte has been instrumental in transforming the company into a national design firm. He feels that involving multiple disciplines and users throughout the design process is key to a successful healthcare facility.

Monte also embraces the importance of evidence-based design and helped form LifeStructures Metrics, a trademark of BSA LifeStructures that uses data to link the relationship between facilities and operations to improve outcomes. His recent evidence-based design experience includes a large inpatient addition currently under construction at Lakeland Regional Medical Center in St. Joseph, Michigan.

Nominated by: Keith Smith, AIA, ACHA, and Robert W. Snyder, AIA, BSA LifeStructures

Roger Leib

Innovator Leib & Leib Ph: 213.400.0817

Roger has been a pioneering innovator in the healthcare furnishings arena for more than 30 years. Since the 1970s, Roger developed many of the industry’s seminal healthcare furnishings. His initial chair was the first to create a soothing rocking motion, first to use mesh indoors providing aeration and heat dissipation, first to address infection control issues head-on, and the first to provide safe, easy entry and exit. Since then his contributions to the field have been numerous: he has received more than 30 patents, written essays on how seating makes a difference in healthcare, designed other furniture components for the patient room, and recently, collaborated with a major manufacturer on next-generation healthcare products. He is consistently thinking outside the box and seeks to create healing and safety with every product introduction.

Nominated by: Tama Duffy Day, FASID, IIDA, LEED AP, Perkins+Will

Rebecca J. Lewis, AIA, CID, ACHA

Partner, Director of Health Care Design DSGW Architects, Inc. Ph: 218.727.2626

Architect Rebecca J. Lewis has been chosen to serve as the 2008 president of American College of Healthcare Architects. As a partner at DSGW Architects, Inc., she has the opportunity to bring a small-town/small-firm perspective to the national organizations.

Ms. Lewis also serves on the Healthcare Guidelines Revision Committee for the Guidelines for Design and Construction of Hospital and Health Care Facilities, 2006 and 2010 Editions. The 125-member revision committee is made up of clinicians, code officials, and medical architects. She is also the co-chair of the AIA Academy of Architects for Health, Codes and Standards Forum which provide architects with current code information that affect their work.

Rebecca’s design work reflects the concerns of facility managers, administrators, and practitioners, and above all, the experience of patients and their families.

Nominated by: Erica Hanson, DSGW Architects, Inc.

Philip LiBassi, AIA, ACHA

Principal Westlake Reed Leskosky Ph: 216.522.1350

Philip LiBassi is a national innovator in healthcare architecture and integrated engineering. Bringing leadership to Cleveland Clinic, he has developed new models of ICU/CCU, blended healthcare into rural landscape with LEED Gold criteria, expanded internationally, and designed an Autism benchmark center.

Phil has pioneered flywheel technology for uninterrupted power at LEED-designed Salem Hospital Central Plant, the first deployment of this innovative green source for healthcare. As a speaker and author, his expertise includes integrated LEED design, planning, application of building information modeling, and complex mechanical/electrical and low-voltage systems unique to healthcare.

Nominated by: Paul E. Westlake, Jr., Westlake Reed Leskosky

Cynthia S. McCullough, MSN

Vice-President and Healthcare Consultant HDR Architecture Inc. Ph: 402.399.1207

Cyndi McCullough is a clear contributor to HDR’s consistently high healthcare industry rankings. She is a vice-president, consultant, clinician, and planner who uses research to influence the design of top-rated healthcare facilities around the United States and abroad. She currently leads a team reviewing the entire healthcare delivery system for the island of Trinidad. A frequent lecturer and author, she has written and edited one book and is now crafting her second on evidence-based practice, medicine, and design, the future of technology, and scientific projections. Cyndi has consulted on 114 healthcare projects in the past 12 years.

Nominated by: Doug Wignall, HDR Architecture, Inc.

William L. Roper, MD, MPH

Chief Executive Officer University of North Carolina Health Care System Ph: 919.966.4161

A one-time presidential adviser and former director of the Centers for Disease Control, Bill Roper is one of the United States’ most distinguished healthcare professionals. Currently, he is working to make UNC Health Care the premier public academic health system in the country. This strategic positioning includes the opening of the new, state-of-the-art North Carolina Cancer Center, which will allow UNC Health Care to better serve its growing patient population, and the undertaking of a comprehensive master site and facilities plan to align academic and hospital growth with building replacement and infrastructure expansion over the next 10 years.

Nominated by: Tina Vaz, Tsoi/Kobus & Associates

Sidney J. Sanders

Vice-President, Facilities and Construction The Methodist Hospital System Ph: 713.441.6438

During his tenure as Director of The University of Texas System Office of Facilities, Planning and Construction, Sid oversaw billions of dollars in healthcare facilities on multiple campuses around the state. Currently, directing the ambitious multibillion dollar, multiple campus expansion of The Methodist Hospital System in Houston, Sid is using his in-depth knowledge of the challenges inherent in implementing complex health facilities to promote new integrated project delivery models for design and construction to improve quality and predictability, control cost and schedule, and enhance staff performance and patient outcomes.

Nominated by: David Watkins, FAIA, WHR Architects, Inc.

Ronald L. Skaggs, FAIA, FACHA, FHFI

Chairman HKS, Inc. Ph: 244.969.5599

Ron Skaggs has spent his entire 40-year career devoted to the practice of healthcare architecture with a specific emphasis on creating healing environments. He began the HKS healthcare group in the 1970s with the goal to establish a leading healthcare practice. He has been a part of most of the firm’s 650 healthcare projects.

Mr. Skaggs believes not only in working in the healthcare design industry, but in being a driving force in its constant growth and development. He is involved in a number of organizations aimed at bettering the healthcare architectural industry including being a Fellow and past President of the American Institute of Architects, a founding Fellow of The American College of Healthcare Architects, and a Fellow of the Health Facility Institute.

Nominated by: Trish Martineck, HKS, Inc.

Gail Vittori

Co-Director Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems Ph: 512.928.4786

An advocate for sustainability and green design, Gail Vittori is helping to change the future of healthcare. Vittori led a committee in developing the Green Guide for Health Care, a 360-page “design tool kit” that has served as the basis for more than 100 pilot projects across the U.S. including Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas, the first hospital in the world designed to achieve LEED platinum-level certification, for which Vittori was LEED consultant. Vittori shares her experiences on this and other healthcare projects in an upcoming book, Sustainable Healthcare Architecture, co-authored by Robin Guenther.

Nominated by: Karlsberger

Joanne Westphal, MD, ASLA

Professor of Landscape Architecture and Physician Michigan State University Ph: 517.256.4401

Joanne Westphal, a licensed physician and landscape architect, specializes in Therapeutic Site Design. She undertook the study of medicine in order to better understand the relationship between health issues and the environment. As a liaison between two professions dedicated to human health and well-being, Joanne has promoted the value of gardens and nature to residents in institutional settings. Her design work calls for a postoccupancy evaluation to insure that the goals and objectives are met. Dedicated to holistic design, she is completing a book, Therapeutic Site Design. Joanne is on the faculty at Michigan State University, and practices medicine.

Nominated by: Cynthia Fraser, Mahan Rykiel Associates Inc.