When we’re ill, doctors attend to what’s injured—they reset the bone, treat the infection, remove the offending mass. But after that, how does a hospital or clinic support our recovery? Can its furnishings be fine-tuned to ease our pain? Can its physical environment be tweaked to improve our sleep? And how can its overall layout and design be rethought as to empower us when our most basic human functions have been transformed into exhausting ordeals?

In this issue, we examine those questions from several angles. Our case study looks at ZGF Architects’ latest children’s clinic in Seattle, which was repurposed from a big-box store. Our feature on hospital acoustics highlights interventions—by the likes of Perkins+Will and Duda|Paine Architects—that increase privacy while decreasing recovery time. Our Healthcare product spec offers goods that make for more comfortable hospital stays, while Accessible Design Solutions provides ideas for creating more holistic built environments for all.