Healing garden doubles as therapy trails

Copley Wolff Design Group, a landscape architecture and planning firm based in Boston, completed therapy trails for the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Charlestown Navy Yard. The design of the trails encourages rehabilitation and lets patients practice real-life physical challenges—such as walking on a sloped surface—within a safe, controlled environment.

The trails incorporate staggered stainless steel handrails, increased walk slopes, distance markers, interactive spinning rock elements for upper-body conditioning, varied walking surfaces, and granite stairs.

The therapy trails turn the patient’s recuperation toward the outdoors, bringing them closer to their return to their daily lives. The trails link to Boston’s Harborwalk, a 47-mile pathway lining the harbor.

Also on the Building Team for owner Partners Healthcare: Perkins+Will (architect), Thompson Consultants (MEP), vhb (CE), AKF Group (lighting designer), Haley & Aldrich (geotechnical engineer), and Walsh Brothers (CM).

During the second week of November, the architecture firm NBBJ launched a podcast series called Uplift, that focuses on the transformative power of design. Its first 30-minute episode homed in on designing for behavioral healthcare facilities, a hot topic given the increasing number of new construction and renovation projects in this subsector.

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he northeast perspective rendering of the building named in honor of Henrietta Lacks. Credit: Vines Architecture

University Buildings | Feb 23, 2023

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Healthcare Facilities | Feb 21, 2023

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Sawyer’s Walk in Miami’s Urban Core. Rendering: Courtesy Sawyer's Walk

Multifamily Housing | Feb 16, 2023

Coastal Construction Group establishes an attainable multifamily housing division

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