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Laura Poltronieri  AIA

Founding Principal

Laura Poltronieri is one of the country's leading health care architects and planners.  She founded Poltronieri Tang & Associates in 2000 as a means of strengthening her commitment to her clients and to her vision of inclusive, humane, function based healthcare planning and design for children, infants and new mothers.    

A native of New York City, Ms. Poltronieri developed an early interest in health care planning and design.  As a student at SUNY Buffalo she was awarded a series of competitive internships with Russo + Sonder, a leading health care design firm.  Her commitment to excellence in the design of health care facilities continued with the development of her master's theses on the cross-cultural aspects of birthing environments.  Upon graduation in 1983, Ms Poltronieri was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to develop "Design Guidelines for the Birth Environment."

Early in her career, she expanded her areas of expertise to include design for special populations through a series of design projects for people with disabilities.  She coauthored a study entitled "Play Spaces for Handicapped Children", and completed a series of innovative projects for the J. N. Adams Developmental Center.   

Ms. Poltronieri began working as a health care architect and planner at Ewing Cole Cherry Brott, a Philadelphia architectural firm, in 1986 where she was planner and manager for hundreds of projects with dozens of clients. She was appointed Director of Healthcare Architecture for the firm in 1994. In that capacity she became an early proponent of Evidence Based Design and initiated a firm-wide  post-occupancy evaluation program and resource center as means of improving the quality of the firm's health care design work. She continued to work intensively with select clients, including the Penn State Geisinger Health System with whom she completed the new Women's and Infants Perinatal Center in 1999.  In late 1997 she began working on the new New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital (CHONY) in New York City and served as Client Principal and lead project planner in conjunction with Davis Brody Bond and Ewing Cole Cherry Brott. The building opened in November 2003.  

In 2004 Poltronieri Tang & Associates in association with Davis Brody Bond was awarded the design of the new $40 million Pediatric Emergency Department replacement project at CHONY.  In 2006 Poltronieri Tang & Associates in association with Payette Associates and Array Healthcare Facilities Solutions began programming, planning, and conceptual design for the proposed Penn State Children's Hospital at The Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, PA, which opened in January 2013.   Ms. Poltronieri has since served as Principal-in-Charge for all the firm's projects for clients including:

  • St. Louis Children's Hospital
  • Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
  • Children's Hospital at Montefiore
  • Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital
  • New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital
  • Children's Hospital of Wisconsin
  • Miami Children's Hospital
  • Children's Inn at the National Institutes of Health
  • Cohen Children’s Hospital North Shore LIJ

Ms. Poltronieri has also served on the Draft Review Committee developing the proposed Children’s Hospital chapter of the 2014 FGI Guidelines for Design and Construction of Health Care Facilities. 


Articles and Publications

“How PICU Design Impacts Visitor Behavior, Staffing Patterns, and Quality Safety Measures” (chapter); Design for Pediatric and Neonatal Critical Care; M. Shepley (ed.); Routledge Architectural Press; due 2014

“Key Considerations in the Design of the PICU Environment” (chapter); Design for Pediatric and Neonatal Critical Care; Routledge Architectural Press; M. Shepley (ed.); due 2014

“Construction on Hold – Design a Fiscal Plan First”; Children’s Hospitals Today; Spring 2009

“Finding Inspiration: The Physician as Design Muse”; Children’s Hospitals Today; Spring 2009

“Evidence Based Design:  Does One Size Fit All”; Children’s Hospitals Today; Spring 2008

“Managing Change:  The Staffing Implications of a New Building”; Children’s Hospitals Today; Fall 2003

“Mid-Life Women’s Health is Big Business for All”; Hospital and Healthcare News; October 1999

“Learning From the Children’s Hospital of New York”; Children’s Hospitals Today; Winter 1999

“Creating the Children’s Health Network for the New York City Region”; Children’s Hospitals Today; Fall 1998

“Women and Children First – Creating the First Regional Perinatal Center for Pennsylvania”; Children’s Hospitals Today; Fall; 1997

“A Framework for Flexibility”; Health Facilities Management; February; 1996

“Designing to Minimize Anxiety”; Children’s Hospitals Today; Winter; 1996

“Medical Center Uses Architectural Detail to Deliver Child Focused Care”; Patient Focused Care, American Health Consultants; June; 1995

“Building Flexibility into a Health Care Facility”; Hospital News; August; 1995

“The Design of the Birth Environment”; Design Grant Recipient; National Endowment for the Arts; 1985

      

      
      

Laura and friends giving their 3rd Annual Carnival for Muscular Dystrophy in 1970



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Poltronieri Tang & Associates
Pediatric Healthcare Planning and Design

206 Park Avenue | Swarthmore, PA 19081 | Tel  215.300.3618