In Sync

Technology is rapidly transforming health care, bringing dramatic (and long overdue) changes to the look of many hospitals. Sync, a swoopy new nurse’s station from Nurture by Steelcase, is an architectural response to the less paper/more technology imperative. “People have been talking about decentralized nursing for twenty years now, but the hurdle was always technology,” says George Vangelatos, a principal at HDR, one of the world’s largest health-care-design firms and a collaborator on the project. “Now wireless is everywhere, and a lot of hospitals are moving to electronic records.”

In producing the pared-down form, the teams did extensive research showing that although nurses don’t stay in one place for long, they still need a central spot for managing patient information. “I think the real beauty of this,” Vangelatos adds, “is how small we were able to make it and still be able to carry a certain amount of CBUs, monitors, and a tabletop surface big enough for a clipboard and folders. It was almost like designing a car. The components were looked at on a very microscopic level.”