Altus Architectural Studios offers full-services architecture and planning services for healthcare providers designed to surpass clients’ expectations.

Premier Business Partners:

Specialized Engineering Solutions JE Dunn ConstructionAltus Architectural Studios Graham Construction Inc.

When it comes to healthcare architecture and design, if there’s one memorable compliment Altus Architectural Studios Inc.’s Vice President of Business Development Patrick Sokol has received, it has to be a client who once commented, “Wow, this doesn’t look like healthcare.”    

Perhaps that’s because Altus stays in-tune with the latest design trends in healthcare today that call for facilities to make the patient, family and provider feel as comfortable in the healthcare setting as they would in their own homes. “Patient-forward design’ is something that’s become a service phrase for us,” Sokol notes. “Our facilities are unique in that once you walk into them, they are non-institutional looking, and that has helped us set ourselves apart from other firms out there.”   

Founded in November 2001, Altus Architectural Studios is an Omaha, Neb.-based full-services architecture, planning and interior design firm that develops projects with its clients that aim to surpass their expectations, according to President Loren Lamprecht. The majority of its work is focused in the healthcare sector. “There are a lot of people in the healthcare world that have not been able to build one of the projects that we’re building, and that comes with the experience we bring to the table in the planning and on the design side,” Lamprecht asserts.    

Altus brings a combined national experience of more than $1 billion worth of healthcare design experience ranging from clinics to critical access hospitals and major teaching hospitals. Its services include master planning, programming design, construction documents, construction administration, specialty consulting and finding financing alternatives.    

Altus works primarily in the Midwest, and is expanding its healthcare design expertise to clients throughout the United States. With regards to the healthcare construction climate, Lamprecht says, “We are fortunate in the Midwest that we don’t see the extremes that the east and west coasts do. Healthcare systems here are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to expand programs and upgrade their infrastructure, and I don’t see that changing.”

Clients Come First
In order for Altus to be progressive in its concepts, it must do more than simply focus on being an architect, Lamprecht says. The firm accomplishes this through evidence-based design. An evidence-based designer, together with the client, makes decisions based on the best information available from research, project evaluations and evidence gathered from the client’s operations.

Evidence-based design should result in demonstrated improvements in the organization’s outcomes, economic performance, productivity, customer satisfaction and cultural measures.   

“Healthcare design has this interesting component – it’s called the patients, and that’s who we are designing for,” Lamprecht notes.    

Each project starts with a brainstorming session where the designers meet with the clients to develop a master plan to carry out the overall vision of the project. The sessions aim to determine potential obstacles that may affect a building’s design, such as zoning constraints, to working around facilities that must be operational during new construction.