Smart building, smart working

Today I had a chance to visit the office of Veldhoen+company, which is a consulting firm in Activity Based Work styles. Basically what Veldhoen + Company does is they support clients in the implementation of a New Way of Working, by researching, developing and advising clients on sustainable work and office concepts.

I really like the concept of arranging the office around a mission of a company and aligning the building to its purpose, instead of other way round.
An example of a project done by Veldhoen+company, that I am particularly impressed with is the Hospital of the Future in Sittard.



The concept of the hospital is about making people feel good there. Usually that experience is quite miserable, partly due to sickness, partly however, due to the environment you are in. Well, in this case, all the factors that contributes to dissatisfaction of patients have been gathered, analysed and the solutions have been incorporated into the concept of the building.

As a starting point, the hospital only has single rooms for patients, each with a bathroom and an additional bed for family that would like to stay over (which partly helps with the workload of the nurses). The doctors dont have separate offices, they work in an open space, in order to share the information and treat THE PATIENT instead of treating the particular part of their body - by looking at a broad picture. The doctors need to cooperate and work as a team - seems like a good idea to me :)

The file of a patient can be accessed by the patient himself through the computer in the room, the patient also has access to the data on all sicknesses so that they can do some research on their own. One of the key principles behind the concept: information supply had to be entirely independent of time and place, both for the patient and for the doctors.

I couldn't find almost any pictures of the hospital in the internet, below thefore also some other projects done by this company: