AKI ISHIDA

​Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Strategic Planning and Innovation Guided Internship was a new form of collaboration that combine the intense inquiry of an academic studio and the externalities of architectural practice. By having the three recently graduated interns worked at MSK as employees under the guidance of two practicing architecture professors, coupled with on-site access to the knowledge and feedback of clinicians and patients.  Conducted on the hospital campus in New York City, the Guided Internship assisted the leaders at MSK to identify current problems and visualize new possibilities that can be brought to cancer care delivery through design.

 

The goal was to explore the potentials of two key space challenges that MSK currently faces in planning for a future facility: 1) the “clinic room of the future” which functions flexibly for both examination and consultation, and 2) the “short stay recovery floor” for outpatients going home within 23 hours of surgery. Our design tools augmented conventional floor plans and elevation drawings with full-scale foamcore mock-up’s of the clinic and recovery rooms incorporating furniture and lighting. By allowing people to inhabit and modify the space in real time, the full-scale simulation of the rooms proved to be remarkably effective in testing various configurations and receiving direct feedback from the medical staff.

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Primary Adviser: Aki Ishida

Secondary Adviser: Lynnette Widder

Interns: Warren Aftahi, Cat Rha, Taylor Wozniak