HEALTHCARE INFLUENCER: Kimmerle Group

KIMMERLE’S HEALTH CARE STUDIO

Through its full-service Health Care Studio, Kimmerle Group is generating a strong and lasting impact both on the way healthcare facilities are being designed and on the users themselves—staff and patients. With a heavy focus on evidence-based design, the Kimmerle’s Health Care Studio is led by veteran healthcare architect and managing director Michael Azarian. The firm is committed to developing healthcare environments that are designed with research and evidence as the basis. Evidence-based design is especially significant when addressing healthcare, as its impact has a direct effect on both healthcare staff and more importantly, on the patients themselves.

In addition, lean architecture and sustainability are two additional core values that the firm is bringing to each and every project they develop within the healthcare industry. Following key green architecture principles along with a commitment to LEED certification pushes the healthcare architecture industry forward, making sure that health environments are also reflecting green and healthy architecture standards. With many of the group’s project sites impacting the urban and suburban landscape, Kimmerle Group brings strong urban planning experience to the design of each project so as to achieve the best fit on and at each site’s interfaces.

With a heavy focus on evidence-based design, the Kimmerle’s Health Care Studio is led by veteran healthcare architect and managing director Michael Azarian (left). Other key leaders of the Kimmerle’s Health Care Studio team are (below, from left) Kimmerle’s founding president and partner, George Kimmerle; principal William Kimmerle; Paul Newmann, VP and partner; and Cindy Xin Cui, partner.

Other key leaders of the Healthcare Studio team are Kimmerle’s founding president and partner, George Kimmerle; principal William Kimmerle; Paul Newmann, VP and partner; and Cindy Xin Cui, partner. Overall, the group is making an impact on the sector through the application of principles that will move the industry’s standards forward. Kimmerle believes the environment plays an integral role in the healing of the mind, body, and spirit. Its healthcare work is ultimately based on the concept of a healing environment promoting a ‘Culture of Health’.

Applying a higher level of standards in the healthcare architecture industry will benefit all patients, which is the firm’s ultimate goal. From a geographical standpoint, the Studio’s biggest impact is in New York and New Jersey, where it has relationships with several healthcare systems throughout the metropolitan area. It plans further expansion throughout New England, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Kimmerle Health Care Studio’s main accomplishment has been to bring to its clients a broad understanding of the off-campus healthcare system and the ability to provide a series of different yet related services all under one platform. Among its recent endeavors is its work on Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, NY. The company developed a master plan for a 150,000-square-foot MOB for complete ambulatory care and 225 subgrade parking spaces. The project included multiple components and expansions. And in Livingston, NJ, Kimmerle designed Summit Medical Group’s ambulatory care facility. The 52,000-square-foot project contained such services as OB/GYN, pulmonology, cardiology, surgery, urgent care, neurological testing, family medicine and internal medicine.  Both of these projects were notable for the high degree of flexibility and lean design principles built into the infrastructure and planning respectively.