Nurturing Smart + Beautiful Design
with a little northwest soul
Jenny Cestnik is a board certified healthcare architect and northwest creative exploring opportunities for wellness from her native Portland, Oregon.
Jenny is an early bird optimist inspired by buildings that heal, music that envelops, and stories that engage. She is passionate about creating architecture where people feel happy and well. By day Jenny is a medical planner, designer, and architect for one of the nation’s leading architectural practices. Away from her desk you’ll find her exploring national parks, tiki bars, and dusty roadside attractions.
I believe smart and beautiful design is born from mindful study and respect of all beings and their unique needs for wellness
As a healthcare architect, I advocate for evidence based solutions and rely on data and metrics as credible resources for planning. I believe the challenge and joy of architecture comes from discovering ways to blend fact with emotional need to create one of a kind places for others to inhabit. However data often changes in medicine. So do living beings and their needs.
Design is not an isolated practice. To succeed, we must share our knowledge of best practices, trends, and experience to test new ideas for the future. Incorporating unique and new goals to a project hat may not have been done before. Through good nature and gut instincts beautiful places can come to fruition.
I believe that healthcare design is more than than building hospitals and clinics. Healthcare is in everything we design from our cities and neighborhoods to the products we use to sustain them. The aspiration for global health is no isolated undertaking, creatives and clinicians must work together to fix the errs of our previous constructed ways. Good design comes from thoughtful response to complex problems and we live in a time when there are many to address.
I’m both thrilled and humbled by the opportunity to help pioneer design trends that improve the lives of those we serve today as well as help prepare as best I can for the future.
Education
Washington State University: BS Architectural Studies, 2007
University of Oregon: Master of Architecture, 2009
Certification
Evidence Based Design Certification, 2019
American College of Healthcare Architects Board Certification, 2020
Registration
State of Washington Registered Architect, 2014
State of Oregon Registered Architect, 2016
Affiliation
Architecture for Health Committee, Board Member and Co-Chair
AIA Oregon, Member
“How we treat our land, how we build upon it, how we act toward our air and water, in the long run, will tell what kind of people we really are.”
— Laurence S. Rockefeller
Recent Articles
Embracing the Call for Resilient Healthcare Design
Designing For Medical And Behavioral Health Comorbidity
How One Architect Embraces Change as Hospitals & Clinics Evolve
Et Cetera
AREndurance
It began as a personal narrative on the process of preparing for and taking the Architect Registration Exam (ARE) and quickly turned into a nationally recognized blog and study guide series for other aspiring architects in the United States. While my ARE journey is over, emerging professionals continue to reference the infamous “Jenny’s Notes” in their own paths to professionalism.
The National Palettes
My personal research project on the National Park System. I’m studying color through an analysis of the unique geology, past and present inhabitants, and infrastructure of each park. To paraphrase the first director of the NPS, Stephen Mather, each park is highly individual but the whole is a revelation. I can’t wait to see where it takes me.
Contact
Please reach out on social media or send me a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible!