In 2022, the design team was tasked with designing a transformative 350-bed behavioral health facility on the Western State Hospital campus in Lakewood, Washington. The project redefines patient-centered care and treatment models while integrating into the south Puget Sound community as an inviting, functional, and environmentally conscious asset.
The design adopts a patient-centric approach, conceptualizing the hospital as a microcosm of urban life. It organizes care around interconnected 26-bed inpatient units (IPUs) and centralized “neighborhoods” that offer group dining, therapy, and educational activities. These neighborhoods, traditionally embedded within IPUs, are reimagined as distinct, hybridized spaces. This innovative structure enhances the breadth of patient functions and promotes natural movement throughout the facility.
The concept, referred to as “A Walk in the Park,” emphasizes harmony between architecture and nature. Five landscaped courtyards, combined with daylit bridges connecting functional spaces, immerse patients and staff in the natural beauty of Western Washington. This design fosters therapeutic movement and reduces the institutional feel of traditional behavioral health facilities.
The exterior architecture further destigmatizes behavioral health, blending modular lattice veils and rhythmic brick facades to create a welcoming aesthetic.
This ground breaking facility prioritizes a patient centered approach that drove design decisions that address carbon, sustainability, ecosystem, community integration, and health and wellbeing, and sets a new standard for behavioral health design.
A Carbon Neutral Hospital Connected to Nature
At Western State Hospital, the New Forensics Hospital puts the patient at the center of the design through its connection to nature. The project preserves, protects, and increases natural open space, ultimately enhancing individual experiences to improve therapeutic quality and results. The program inverts a traditional inward facing courtyard approach to a linear branching program that enables passive solar design, increases natural daylight and connects patients and staff with views of nature. High performance architecture is paired with integrated engineering systems that drastically reduce energy consumption and a sitewide PV array that aims for net zero energy. The hospital will accelerate the patient’s rehabilitation and healing process and provide a working environment with reduced stress.
This LEED Gold and carbon neutral designed hospital will improve the collective health of all Western State by enhancing natural connections, mitigating the new forensic hospital’s contribution to climate change, and providing a restorative effect to the surrounding ecosystem. This patient centered approach drove design decisions that address carbon, ecosystem, and health and wellbeing simultaneously.
Category:Green ArchitectureYear:2025Location: Lakewood, Washington, USAArchitects:Helmuth Obata Kassabaum (HOK)Lead Architect:Paul WoolfordGeneral Contractor:Clark Construction Group LLC.Client:Western State HospitalImages:Courtesy of the Architects
