Robin Guenther, principal and globally renowned leader in sustainable healthcare design, was honored Tuesday with a Women In Design award from Healthcare Design and Contract, two of the most influential industry magazines in North America.
The awards honor women who’ve made outstanding contributions to the design profession in fields as diverse as healthcare, corporate interiors, hospitality, retail, and environments for aging populations. This year, 10 women received the award. Guenther was recognized for her pioneering role in sustainable healthcare design, and for her tireless advocacy for material transparency and nontoxic building products.
“My career has always been about disruption. It’s about disrupting the status quo. I believe that that kind of disruption, in the most positive sense, requires not only design innovation, but (also) education and advocacy at very deep levels,” Guenther said while accepting the award. “We have to create a different future in the built environment, and those three pillars are the way we have to do it.”
Some of Guenther’s most recent projects include Spaulding Rehabilitation Center in Boston, Massachusetts; Memorial Sloan Kettering Monmouth in Middletown, New Jersey; and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford in Palo Alto, California.
In addition to her role as principal at Perkins&Will, Guenther is a senior advisor to Health Care Without Harm. She coauthored the Green Guide for Health Care and served on the LEED for Healthcare committee. She is also the author of Sustainable Healthcare Architecture. Guenther is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Leader and was named “No. 1 Most Influential Designer in Healthcare” by Healthcare Design in 2010 and 2011. In 2012, Fast Company named her one of the “100 Most Creative People in Business.”
