Welcome to Hospital Land

Lobbies are for waiting, and when the wait involves parents and children, they’re for biting nails and hoping the kids will hold out just a few more seconds, minutes . . . hours. Probably the worst waiting rooms of all are in hospitals.

Most hospital waiting rooms provide, at best, seating areas and a video to sedate kids. Or, if you’re lucky, a table for drawing pictures. Despite its reputation as one of the top pediatric hospitals in the country, the public areas of Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, the century-old pediatric center in Los Feliz, used to be no better than the competition. But now patients and their families are greeted in the new $67-million Marion and John E. Anderson Building by a play land of interactive computers, an aquarium with a submerged Griffith Observatory, a mini-library area staffed by volunteer readers and a 260-foot-long mural--all the invention of the Walt Disney Co.’s Disney Imagineering.

This elaborate welcome mat, known as the John Stauffer Lobby, is a concourse within a new surgery center that directs traffic to all parts of the hospital; the lobby is also intended to entertain families and send a clear message about the hospital itself. Through colorful mural images echoing the neighborhoods of Los Angeles, through iconography in all the play areas evoking the diversity of the region, the new entry hall is a colorful and unintimidating environment that signals that a multilayered kind of medicine is practiced here.

“We want people to understand that this is a serious place, but not a depressing place,” said Mary Dee Hacker, the hospital’s vice president for patient care services. “We are at a turning point in trying to figure out what a caring environment should be,” said Hacker, who is also a registered nurse, referring to the fact that the hospital also has plans to build a new in-patient facility. “We want to send the message that this is a place where they will heal and be cared for.”

The new wing reflects a growing movement in hospital architecture to be more accommodating not only to patients but also to their families. In this instance, developing new approaches to healing has been a collaboration between the hospital staff, the Disney team, which volunteered its work on the project, and the architects of the building itself, the Santa Monica firm of Lee, Burkhart, Liu, Inc., specialists in hospitals and institutional buildings.

The new building, which opened last weekend and was designed by Kenneth E. Lee, is a bright, airy space that faces Sunset Boulevard with a two-story wall of windows. A lively buzz of activity is immediately evident, 24 hours a day, from outside the building, as hundreds of people pour through the space at any given time. Because the 314-bed hospital serves a specialized community of children that can range from infants to teens, the signal it gave off had to appeal to all ages.

“We did not want this lobby to look like it was just for babies,” Hacker said. And “it could not be cutesy.” Some hospitals have explored using themes to liven their public spaces, but evoking a zoo or a park wasn’t what the hospital wanted. Marty Sklar, vice chairman of Walt Disney Imagineering and the company’s principal creative executive who has been working on Disney’s theme parks since Disneyland opened in 1955, helped Childrens Hospital develop the logo “My LA, My CHLA” as its identity.

Sklar came to the project three years ago at the invitation of his good friend, Disney family lawyer Ron Gother, who at the time was serving as the hospital’s board chairman. Although Disney Imagineering had previously produced some outside projects, such as a children’s museum in Baltimore, previous work had been done on a fee basis.

Sklar said he was immediately hooked by the concept of creating a new kind of space, and he enlisted a dozen artists from his creative staff to develop the project. He told them the work would be done on their own time, but, he said, he had no trouble getting people to sign up. Unlike Disney’s usual projects, the group immediately recognized that “you don’t go there to have fun,” Sklar said, and this would not be a theme park. It also was not about the Disney brand, but rather a much larger theme of Los Angeles; in fact, Donald Duck appears in one tiny viewing box about Hollywood that lights up when a child pushes a button, but so do Betty Boop, the Eveready Bunny and Elvis.

John Horny, a director of concept design for Disney Imagineering, became primary designer for the project. He says his involvement deepened when the child of a friend came to the hospital on an emergency basis and died there while Horny was developing the designs. “It really hit home that we were doing something important,” Horny said. “It got me on all levels.”

A major element for the project was the long wall space that traverses the entire concourse. It needed a mural, and Horny suggested contacting artist David Hockney, whose complex multiple viewpoint landscape paintings he admires. “I thought it would be good for the hospital to have an important name artwork,” Horny says, but when Hockney was not able to take on the project, Horny agreed to create the mural himself. “Hockney, Horny, I guess I was just next on the alphabetical list,” he joked.

Horny developed a schematic model for the mural, using panels that could be blown up and replicated. Lexington Scenery then re-created Horny’s 3-inch by 5-inch panels into 153 3-foot by 5-foot rectangles and created a set of paint kits--almost like paint-by-numbers--that were sent to 56 schools, most from L.A. Unified School District and a few private high schools.

In the end, more than 475 students painted panels, following Horny’s palette and design. When the image was assembled on the hospital wall recently, everyone was relieved when both the images and the colors matched up remarkably well. It is the kind of art that can be viewed quickly, but also invites close attention--a distraction and a symbol of collaboration.

Lee points out that like many hospitals, Childrens Hospital, which serves 300,000 patients annually, is part of a trend to make a hospital stay--whatever the length--more soothing. As Cedars-Sinai Medical Center has proved over time with its distinguished art collection, the quality of a medical environment makes a difference to people who come there.

“For a long time, hospitals thought they couldn’t emulate Cedars because they couldn’t afford it, but now they’re finding other ways. Hospitals have come to realize that the experience of a patient and their family can give them a marketing edge,” he said. “Hospitals today are recognizing that they need to have medical excellence, but they also need an inviting environment.”

A testament to the new environment may be the experience of 3-year-old Kyle, a pre-op patient Tuesday who immediately was drawn into one area’s interactive activities. “He probably likes it here better than the park,” said Kyle’s mother, Fay Gin, with a laugh. “He loves to discover new stuff.”