SmithGroup Named Finalist in 2026 HCD Breaking Through Competition

SmithGroup has been named a finalist in the 2026 Healthcare Design Breaking Through competition for The Conscious Hospital, a forward-looking concept that reimagines the relationship between the built environment and the people who work and heal within it.

Hosted by Healthcare Design magazine, the biennial competition invites design teams to envision bold new approaches to care delivery by removing conventional constraints and encouraging innovative thinking about the future of healthcare.

SmithGroup's entry confronts a core challenge that is reshaping the industry: workforce. As healthcare organizations across the country strain under the weight of staffing shortages, burnout and operational complexity, The Conscious Hospital proposes a fundamentally different kind of environment—one designed not just to house care, but to actively support the people delivering it.

The concept, developed through SmithGroup's IdeaLab research initiative, asks a deceptively simple question: what if the building worked as hard as the people inside it?

The finalist recognition continues SmithGroup's strong track record in the Breaking Through competition, including a winning submission in 2024 with Decaf Hospital, a semifinalist recognition in 2022 for MediDesis and a finalist honor in 2020 for Fare2Care.

The 2026 Breaking Through team includes Annie Chiang, Sahar Radwan, Divya Jayaram, Matt Richter, Meredith Westland, Timothy Kim and Richard Biolette.

Finalists will present their concepts at the 2026 HCD Conference & Expo in New Orleans this October, where attendees will select the winning team.

As the competition moves forward, The Conscious Hospital continues SmithGroup's commitment to research, innovation and exploring the future of healthcare design.