A postnatal care center is a multi-functional space that provides professional
postnatal care services for a mother and a baby including accommodation, medical and health care. Since its first appearance in the mid-1990s, more professional services are being added that require a segmentalized and rational space design that includes a family space for a mother, a baby, and other family members, a nursery space for nurses to take care of babies, and program spaces for mothers. As the society encountered the age of low fertility, postnatal care centers strengthen their competitiveness with distinctive interior and various services.
Yale Queen's House Postnatal Care Center is designed with the unique and luxurious image of 'Boutique Hotel' with the subtitle of 'Honeymoon with a Baby' to reflect the meaning of the living in the postnatal care center as the first trip with a new family member.
The image of a 'Boutique Hotel' begins from its exterior. The 5-floor exterior design with three masses with different material properties and colors. The front facade has the stable structure and cubic perception through the left and upper masses colored with white color, the ㄴ-shaped mass finished with the warmth of red cedar, and the ㄷ-shaped aluminum composite panels. The constructive beauty is especially noticeable at night with the holes in the masses, projected frames for about 20cm, and the indirect lightings.
The sculptural beauty from the indirect lightings is connected to the interior.
As the primary purpose of the building is a postnatal care, the indirect lighting minimizes the light exposed to a mother and a baby to produce a gentle atmosphere in the spaces. The only direct lightings installed in Queen's House are the lights in the infant units to check for jaundice of newborns.
The first floor is designed as a parking lot and the second floor has reception, mothers' rooms (VIP and standard), waiting room, pediatrics department, internal medicine department, massage room, training room, and a counseling office. The reception space of the second floor is designed with circles and curves and finished with white color with red color points to produce a gentle and stable atmosphere. The third and fourth floors are composed of mothers' rooms, infant units, feeding rooms, nurse's offices, foot bathing room, lowerbody bathing room, and a lounge. The third floor has red color and diagonal lines as the point of the spaces, and the fourth floor has a dark color and straight lines as the point. At the middle of the hallway, there are sofas for rest concerning the behavioral pattern of mothers. There are system shelves located by the sofas to resolve problems of meal plates and clothing from mothers' rooms making a mess. The fifth floor has a dining area designed with a huge entrance to provide an extraordinary sensory to the visitors by using real stones rather than a commonly used steal pipe handle to add the warmth of nature.
The interior designs of each floor have maximized simplicity with colors and diagonal lines applied to hint points. Spaces are completed as people fill in. Therefore, by sparing rooms for the mass, color, and shape of people, we expect the diversely completed Queen's House, changing every moment.