YDA Students Take on a Real-World Hospital Design Challenge

Young Designers Academy students have been given the opportunity to work on a real-world design project with the Royal Surrey Hospital, exploring ideas for the redesign of its Paediatric, Children and Young People's outpatient department.

The project gives students the chance to experience how professional designers approach a live brief, beginning with understanding the people who will use a space and the challenges that need to be addressed.

As part of the project, students visited Royal Surrey Hospital to experience the existing environment and begin thinking about how the space could be improved. They considered how colour, materials, layout, furniture and visual communication could contribute to a more welcoming and engaging environment for children, young people and their families.

Back at the Young Designers Academy studio, students began developing their own ideas and exploring different approaches to the brief. Rather than simply designing a space that looks good, they are being encouraged to think about how design can influence people's experiences and make a real difference to the way a space is used.

The project brings together many of the skills students develop at YDA, including research, observation, sketching, model-making, spatial design and presenting ideas.

We are particularly excited to see how the students' ideas develop as the project progresses and to share their work as they move from their initial observations and concepts towards their final designs.

This is exactly the kind of real-world design experience we want our students to have at YDA — working with meaningful briefs, developing their own ideas and discovering what it is like to think and work like a designer.