Since the very earl days of DAE we have been loyal consultants to anyone with questions about how to implement heavy medical installations in existing, functioning care facilities. We have assisted the installation of numerous scanners, magnetic tomographs, linear accelerators and many other medical installations that had an enormous impact on the building and its installations, making it necessary for suppliers and hospitals to call in specialized advice.
Since decades now we are loyal partners in these projects and have attained a high degree of specialized skills and knowledge.
However, and strange enough for anyone looking at these projects: it is the design part that matters most to us.
Indeed, design comes in very different forms and ways. Current beliefs and media coverage have reduced it to the superficiality of what can be seen by our eyes. But true design is a discipline of human thought that is wider than just object or building design and deeper than the superficiality of the visible skin around things and processes. It addresses processes, systemic organizations of people and flows but also the physics and chemics of materials, fluids and how they impact on people.
Time and time again we need to explain to our colleagues or interested parties, what it is that attracts us, as renown designers, so much in performing design efforts of the kind that are invisible, that are technical up to an extreme point of utility but without any formal appearance in the visual arena.
We always answer: ‘because it is pure design’.
Indeed, that is what it essentially comes down to: design orders the things and the processes around people.
No visuals, no appearance, no surface, only what matters.
It has taken us to achieve the highest possible technical skill in how to build for the extreme situations such as many high end medical environments are. It makes us communicate with a wide range of highly specialised professionals and it challenges our design and creativity every day. Yet the only way to ascertain if it has been successful and effective is when it goes by unnoticed, in other words: when it -only- works.