Approach

The Klein team shares a collective passion for uplifting the health and wellbeing for communities around the country through inspired, human-centric, and future-thinking designs.

Armed with our decades of health design experience, we’ll help you deliver ambitious goals to create a lasting, positive impact on the communities you serve – built environments where staff can work to their highest potential, where patients feel valued and nurtured, and where whānau can participate in the healing journey of loved ones.  We are driven by a social purpose to deliver better, greener and more equitable health infrastructure for all our communities.

As a trusted source of knowledge and solutions, the Klein team prompt and challenge user groups during the design process to unearth their deeper needs and aspirations.

Key to providing leading edge solutions is a thorough understanding of user needs.

With a spirit of respect and curiosity, we enquire, learn and digest user needs, then create ideas to test and explore with the group. We gather and connect complex and often isolated issues in a holistic and co-ordinated manner to find new ways of thinking about problems and to deliver better design solutions. Our goal is to look beyond the immediate project constraints and engage with the essence of the project opportunity, looking for long-term site opportunities to deliver transformative, future-proofed projects.

The Klein team’s depth of experience and familiarity with best practices in health design, regular inhouse design reviews and research into local and global design enables us to provide leading edge solutions in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

We are experts in salutogenic and biophilic design for mental health – enriched, democratic environments that focus on users’ psychological, social and spiritual needs, with an emphasis on nature, natural light and fresh air.

Award-winning projects such as Tiaho Mai Acute Mental Health Unit at Middlemore Hospital and Hillmorton Hospital Specialist Mental Health Services have demonstrated the effect an environment focused on holistic wellbeing can speed and improve recovery, while having real impact on human behaviour. We bring these principles to all our projects to create beautiful, healing spaces.

We seek to enhance mana whenua presence, visibility, and participation in the design of healthcare environments, so tikanga Māori can flourish. Culturally capable healthcare environments improve outcomes for tāngata whaiora and their whānau, providing a place that feels safe and familiar. 

Consultation and co-design shapes the model of care and the architecture that supports it. Principles such as actively engaging and supporting whānau, treating tāngata whaiora in a culturally appropriate and sensitive manner, and considering a tikanga Māori approach to recovery must all be supported by the physical setting.

In a health context, it is important for clinical services and clinical environment to be designed with and for tangata whaiora – both in terms of health equity but also the restoration of mana motuhake. 

Klein works with local artists to provide appropriate mahi toi for integration into the project.

As designers and specifiers in a resource-intensive industry, we help our clients make meaningful carbon emission reductions in the construction and operation of their buildings.

We know the key elements of low energy design such as building orientation and shapes, and which building materials will reduce environmental impact and toxicity and where to use them. We know the systems and technology used to track resource use, and the requirements for disassembly at a building’s end of life.

Klein are long-standing members of the New Zealand Green Building Council, with in-house registered Green Star professionals, and we are working toward zero-emissions in both our own operations and for our clients.

Adaptive re-use and refurbishment can be one of the most effective contributors to reducing our carbon footprint and an area that Klein excel at. We can advise if it is sensible to re-use, and when it is sensible to build new.

Working closely with user groups and consumers in the early phases of design, we are here to help our clients evolve their model of care and to transform their physical environments. We bring expert technical knowledge and guidance to every dimension of your project, regardless of its size or nature. 

The quality of our service to you is unparalleled in the industry. Our friendly and professional team of experts is highly responsive to our clients’ urgent needs and respectful of project timeframe.  The standard and comprehensiveness of our architectural documentation is often praised by our many clients and contractors as excellent building manuals. This attentiveness is carried throughout the life of a project from feasibility and business case support through to site observations and defects handling.