A Healing Nature
Vivian A. Kao ’04 Health and Counseling Center
Wellesley College
Wellesley, MA
At Wellesley College, the Health Center fulfills a vision to support the interconnectedness of holistic health and wellness, and environmental stewardship.
The new 2-story Health Center and Counseling Services replaces the Simpson Infirmary, which was originally designed by Shepley Bulfinch in the late 40s. The project combines both campus services in a new modern facility that utilizes the building’s existing foundation to reduce embodied carbon emissions and demonstrates innovation through thinking about construction and materiality in a new way for the campus. A prefabricated building process provided a higher performance exterior wall exterior wall was installed to provide a higher performance structure, as compared to traditional post beam construction, allowing for a quicker build time on a tight site nestled in the woods.
The first floor of the center houses clinic space, exam rooms, small labs, while the second floor includes health and counseling offices that are enveloped by natural light and materials, providing connection to the restorative, healing surrounding landscape. The second floor also includes a flexible meeting room to allow for more collaboration between the two user groups as well as a place for campus student wellness and activities to take place.
It’s imperative for campuses to find the right mix and style of support for the health of their community — students must feel empowered to bring their whole selves to campus. Through a stakeholder engagement process and analysis of the existing network of health and wellness spaces throughout the campus, in conjunction with the Science Hill landscape master plan completed by Mikyoung Kim Design, we’ve created places that reveal the physical, material, experiential, and environmental characteristics of the site. To enhance the student experience, our programming and design strategies are applied through the following lenses:
- Healing: integrating services that foster a compassionate environment
- Connecting: supporting intimacy and interaction, equity, and inclusion
- Comforting: including healthy materials and natural light, blurring indoor and outdoor
- Restoring: landscape and program integration, placemaking through ecology
The project achieves LEED Gold certification standards with green features including the use of mass timber, low embodied carbon, all electric net zero ready, copious natural light, and a restorative biophilic interior. The project’s focus on sustainable design supports Wellesley’s commitment to holistic health and counseling along with their carbon plan for 2025.