Face Time: Joan Albert

Page Principal and healthcare designer Joan Albert was spotlighted in this month's Face Time feature in Healthcare Design Magazine. They got the background on how she came to focus on the healthcare market sector and some insights into her personality. Read on to learn more about Joan.

The below excerpt has been edited for brevity. To read the full interview by Anne DiNardo in Healthcare Design Magazine, click here. 

Joan spent 10 years at Page designing “jewel buildings” for the hospitality, commercial, and academic sectors, before the opportunity arose to participate in project interviews for two greenfield projects at Houston Methodist and Texas Children’s hospitals.

It was while working on the Houston Methodist campus that Albert, who was named principal four years ago, says she knew she could make a difference by bringing her skills in other sectors to healthcare settings.

“It also allowed me to engage my training in anthropology to provide a variety of spaces that accommodate different cultural attitudes toward medicine,” she says. Most recently she’s contributed to projects for University Medical Center, in El Paso, Texas, a Healthcare for the Homeless Houston project, and a VA mental health clinic in Houston.

AD: What lesson did you learn on that project that you still carry with you today?

JA: How to integrate all my design experience from other building types into healthcare design. Because I was new to healthcare, I experimented with using materials from my hospitality and commercial projects, to challenge the existing language of healthcare architecture and interiors.

AD: What trend in healthcare design do you find to be a breath of fresh air?

JA: New technology and the potential for the redefinition of space that will come from current and future developments. I’m working on a clinic for millennials right now, and it’s interesting to see how younger people perceive healthcare for themselves. Telemedicine, mobile device check-in, and digital quick-scan diagnostics could give designers the ability to redistribute space.

AD: [What are] Three words that describe your design aesthetic? 

JA: 1. tactile
      2. cohesive
      3. light (creating airy spaces, bringing natural light into places in unique ways, and making use of man-made light)

The above excerpt has been edited for brevity. To read the full interview by Anne DiNardo in Healthcare Design Magazine, click here.