Care givers at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center believe good design can help patients heal, which is why The Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children’s Center building features an elegant design with peace and quiet for patients as a priority.

In planning the building, architects, designers, doctors, nurses and families provided input with the comfort of the patients and their families in mind, and the result is a quiet, calm, and serene healing environment with a clean, contemporary edge. Visitors will sense the design inspiration as they pass the gardens outside and enter the large welcoming lobbies filled with natural light from the hospital’s new main entrance at 1800 Orleans Street.

The Johns Hopkins Children’s Center houses 205 pediatric private-patient rooms that include private baths and in-room sleeping accommodations to allow a family member to spend the night by their loved one’s side. For pediatric patients, a children’s meditation room addresses their spiritual needs while a two-story indoor play area provides a space to get away from their room and just be a kid. The goal was to create an environment that is both soothing and quiet and will hopefully make the experience as pleasant as possible for our patients and families.

Guests familiar with traditional hospital environments will likely notice the lack of noise in the Bloomberg Children’s Center. Several design features have been implemented with that goal in mind. For example:

• Acoustical soffits, ceiling tiles and fabric-wrapped panels strategically placed to intercept and absorb sound
• Decentralized work stations to bring clinical care providers closer to their patients rather than gathering in one central location with competing conversations
• Dedicated, separate elevators for patient transport, supplies and visitors to cut down on foot traffic and noisy carts in patient areas
• Hand-held mobile devices for clinical staff communication rather than overhead paging.
• Rubber floors in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) to further minimize the noise for the newborns