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juliana children's hospital published in frame

26-02-2016

FRAME has published the Juliana Children's Hospital in their 2016 March/April issue (#109) about the use of color relating to wellbeing. The article is titled 'Soothing Treatment - Children's Hospital'.

"Happiness design? To comfort and delight ailing children, a hospital in The Hague greets patients with a rich but simple palette that ties together architecture, furnishings, signage, wallcoverings and multimedia. MVSA Architects, part of the VolkerWesselsHaga Consortium, is responsible for both the exterior and interior design of the HagaHospital, which includes the Juliana Children's Hospital. The firm established four colour zones (green, yellow, purple and blue) that are used for walls, furnishings and doorways and that relate ro wayfinding and functionality. Experience design agency Tinker imagineers added wall graphics and interactive media to MVSA's colour-coded zones. 

The interior design is crisp, clean and white, whereas the animations are full of character, literally. 'It's not just 4000m2 of animated wallpaper,' says Tinker's Stan Boshouwers. 'Via interactive projections and animations layered over wallcoverings in treatment rooms, the pre-op room and the passageway to the operating theatre, the storytelling follows five characters who live in a world of sun, sand and sea - and who accompany young patients on their journey through the hospital.'

The colour scheme helps to define each character's personality. Computerlike C-Bot, for example, is grass-green, 'eye-catching but quieting shade', Boshouwers says, 'because most children are scared of hospital machines'. C-Bot is rational and technical but optimistic, smart and ever-curious about medical devices, mediating between them and the children whose lives depend on them. Colours are characters in this interior, design tools that almost make illness another part of the adventure, a rite of passage on the way to the operating room."

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