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
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