Mr. Folonis has been invited to present at this year’s ACE Summit and Reverse Expo and will be a panelist on the ‘Designing Award Winning Facilities’ to discuss how carefully crafted and designed medical buildings benefit all of society. Presenting the UCLA Outpatient Surgery and Oncology Center to illustrate key conceptual ideas that guide the firm's design.

Panel: Designing Award Winning Facilities

The panel posses the question, when healthcare facilities win awards for architecture design, projects are said to exhibit conceptual strengths that solve aesthetic, civic, urban, and social concerns as well as the requisite functional and sustainability concerns of a hospital. For years, a patient-focused healing environment that includes a more natural and less clinical environment has been thought to promote healing in patients as well as productivity in medical staff.

Additionally, various conservation and environmental sustainability practices have become top of mind when designing structures where medical care is delivered. As we move into an era of people-centered care, how do we begin to literally foster a relationship between the hospital and its community through facility design? How can architects connect with the patient population while being removed from the actual care delivery? Panelists will discuss these questions as well as how to maintain the patient’s personal story in an era of technology-driven care and an overall sector transition to population health management.