By Rach Viski

The envirographic artworks inside the new Wattle Building for The Children’s Hospital at Westmead were inspired by children, shaped by their drawings, and designed for everyone who passes through.

The Wattle Building is filled with light, colour and hope. Supporting expanded paediatric services, it has been designed to feel like somewhere, someone cared for families before they arrived. “You walk into the front door of this building, and you don’t feel like you’re walking into a hospital,” said a parent whose newborn son received care in the building following its opening.

The envirographics program for the Wattle Building was commissioned by NSW Health Infrastructure on behalf of the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network, with Rach Viski as principal artist. Co-creation workshops held in clinical spaces and schools invited children, patients and families to draw what connects them to feeling most like themselves, what they love, and details they notice in the world around them.

Those 190 drawings of animals, birds, ripples on the water’s surface, and even spaceships became the tools for a visual language installed as 5,000 square metres across the new 14-storey building. Digitised as storylines, textures, characters and marks along corridors, in lift lobbies and clinical spaces, these visual environments now meet families in their hardest moments, their most hopeful ones, and the long hours in between.

Co-creation is an approach that builds meaningful outcomes, and one of the reasons the envirographic artworks feel the way they do, by carrying the lived experiences of others. The finished body of work belongs, emphatically, to the children who made it, and to every child who will one day recognise something of themselves in it.

Brigette Uren, Principal Arts Programs at NSW Health Infrastructure, reflects: “Co-creation is foundational to healing environments. Artists are much needed for health care spaces – and when artists listen deeply and work with communities, their artworks can nurture belonging, wellbeing and improved health outcomes – for patients as well as staff.”

Along with an understanding of evidence-based design, co-created envirographics are well-suited to healthcare. A full wall graphic drawn from children’s imaginations reads as a landscape from a distance, giving a corridor a sense of place.

Kangaroo paw and butterflies from the same landscape, applied as window glazing, filter light into clinical spaces.

At a toddler’s eye level, schools of fish wait to be discovered.

Designed with intention, immersive worlds are integrated into the building, and revealed with more nuance for a parent traipsing the corridor, finding new details depending on the moment.

Co-created artwork carries an inherent alignment with neuroarts research and extends the collective visual language beyond the walls. The same characters in the corridor can be integrated into wayfinding, or support breathwork, poetry and reflection in an activity booklet.

The act of emphasising local insight in the work encourages people to look closely at the natural world around them, bringing the outside in. Noticing ripples on the surface of water.

The rustle of leaves in the wind. Bird formations in the distance.

When these insights are integrated with an understanding of the operational complexities of healthcare settings, the impact is felt from patients, families, and visitors.

Spaces that foster connection, belonging, and engagement are what co-created envirographics make possible. Designed by children, for everyone who needs them, people find something familiar to focus on, something to count, something to reach up and touch. A horizon line in the distance. Footprints leading the way. A mark made by a child’s hand joyfully telling the tale of what it feels like to be them. This is care, and it belongs in every healthcare setting that understands what it means to treat a human being. Instrumental for belonging. Foundational for wellbeing.

Find out more:

https://mintaviski.com.au/in-the-wild/westmead

The Children’s Hospital at Westmead Envirographics Project team

Client                                                     NSW Health Infrastructure
Health Service                                     Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network
Project Management                          Scyne Advisory
Builder                                                  Roberts Co.
Architect & Interior Design              Billard Leece Partnership
Wayfinding                                          Frost* Collective
Fabricators                                           Scaffad

Photo Credit: Matt Beaver

Written by Rach Viski.

Posted by Elyssa Sykes-Smith.

  • Rach Viski is the founder and principal designer of Minta Viski, a research-led creative practice designing immersive environments. Throughout the last decade, she’s led envirographics programs across three major NSW Health Infrastructure redevelopments: Wagga Wagga Base Hospital, Griffith Base Hospital, and The Children’s Hospital at Westmead.
  • Elyssa Sykes-Smith is a multidisciplinary artist, educator and researcher, and Media Officer at AHNNA.