The hospital project so far:

During the last meeting, we discussed many ideas, and while the project is still in a very new and transitory phase, this is where it stands so far. I've included images I found and used as reference, obviously none of them are mine and I am not claiming them as such, I am adding them to help illustrate my idea.

For the unifying element, we have decided to go with a "world tree" that would cut through each floor, roots on the bottom, trunk and branches on the middle two, and leaves on the top. This fits in with the idea of growth, wellness, and life, and since the idea of the world tree, or tree of life, is present in almost every culture, it is a very accessible symbol. To make sure that everyone in the project is able to work on the mural equally, we talked about going with a simple painting style, think of cell shading. To keep the mural interesting, we talked about adding patterns and images inside of the tree. Personally, I was looking at celtic design for the idea of interesting and complex patterns done in a fairly simple way.



We decided that each floor should have a different theme of wellness and health, perhaps sports, gardens, activities, the like. There was some discussion as to how to tie each floor in with the theme of the tree, so it felt like a cohesive whole, instead of random images simply tacked onto a tree mural. The most popular idea was to have whatever the theme of the floor was start off as carvings inside of the tree, break out, and become less geometrical and wooden and more organic and flowing as the images wrap around the stairwell to the door. The closest representation of the idea I could find would be the tree of life in Animal Kingdom.



In order to draw interest to the stairwell, we talked about painting whatever the theme of the hall was on the door to the stairwell, so there would be something to draw you into the stairwell. While we were discussing what we wanted to paint on the walls, we felt we should make sure to represent what the staff of the hospital would want to see instead of just whatever we would want to paint, so we decided to email a survey out to the staff asking what they thought of when they thought of wellness and health. This way, our mural would directly appeal to the staff.

This is an overview of our ideas and our direction so far, any suggestions to better the idea, and even sketches to further illustrate your ideas are welcome.

~ Denny