Vivant Mind

Vivant Mind’s new psychiatric practice in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, was built around calm: pale walls, cream furniture and warm wood. They wanted flowers and greenery through the whole practice, from the entrance to the corridors, that would keep looking as they did on the first day with no watering, no daylight and no service visits.

Patients wait in more than one place: at the reception, in small corners with two chairs and a table, and in a long lounge with seats along the walls. Each needed its own planting. The lounge also needed a way to give the seats some privacy from each other and from the corridor without building walls, and in an interior this pale the green had to bring colour without looking busy.

A large preserved arrangement of pink hydrangea and plum grasses sits on the reception desk under the sign. Each waiting corner has a low bowl of preserved magenta hydrangea and dried flowers in rust on its table. In the lounge, white trough planters of preserved eucalyptus stand between the chairs as screens, and tall textured planters of preserved eucalyptus and green leaves mark the entrance and the doors along the corridors.

There are flowers or greenery wherever patients sit or walk, in the same cream and wood as the rooms around them, and the planters split the lounge into quieter seating areas. All of it is real flowers and foliage, preserved, so none of it needs water, daylight or a maintenance contract.