Main entrances and thoroughfares in the new Wattle Building at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead (CHW) will integrate large-scale, vinyl wall murals to encourage distraction, storytelling and curiosity.  

The purpose of the artworks, called envirographics is two-fold. The artworks intend to draw patients and families away from the clinical settings through colour, narrative and imagination. The designs on each floor will have a unique visual identity, depicting natural landscapes to help people distinguish between areas of the new building, aligning with the building’s external design concept.

Artist Rachel Viski has been commissioned to develop the envirographics in collaboration with Billard Leece Partnership (BLP) and Frost Collective.  

To inform the visual concepts and capture a broad range of ideas and themes reflective of the culturally diverse Westmead community, a series of co-design workshops were recently held.  

Workshops took place in the hospital’s Starlight Express Room, galleria near the hospital front entrance, Ronald McDonald House, Adolescent Medicine and with the Youth Council. Local students from Westmead Public School and Bayanami Public School have also contributed to the concepts.  

“A visual body of work is inadvertently a relationship with those using a clinical space, in which we do not want to cause discomfort on top of what they may already be experiencing,” Ms Viski said. 

“The narrative and artwork style of the envirographics also need to connect to heavy traffic and cross-cultural spaces. 

“Using a human-centred design approach for site specific envirographics installed in a health care setting, we can deliver better, more impactful outcomes.” 

Hear from artist Rachel Viski and students at Bayanami Public School about this stage of the design process: