The Courtyard
Children's Hospital · Erlanger · Chattanooga, TN · 2025
A blank hospital courtyard turned into a park. Hand-painted hills, sky and tulip beds wrapping every planter, so kids stuck inside get an afternoon outside with their families.
Location
Erlanger · Chattanooga, TN
Year
2025
Scope
Exterior · Large scale · Civic
Surfaces painted
Planter walls · Retaining walls · Building façade · Benches · Ground
A kid who can't leave the building can still go to the park with their family.
The courtyard at the children's hospital was concrete on three sides and nobody used it. Families stayed inside because there was nothing out there worth walking to.
The brief was to make it somewhere a kid would ask to go. So the hills went on the far wall, the sky above them, and tulip beds wrapped every planter at the height of a child standing next to it — close enough to touch, which is the point.
Painted by hand over several weeks, on site, around a working hospital.
The far wall, looking in from the doors
Planters, path, benches
A detail
The tulips are at kid height on purpose
Every planter got its flowers painted at the eye level of a child standing next to it, not an adult walking past. It is the one decision in the whole courtyard that changes how it feels, and nobody notices it consciously.
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