Every year, more than 7 million children across Latin America are victims of burn accidents. In Chile alone, 100,000 burn accidents occur, with the majority involving children under 5 years of age. Burn injuries are the third-leading cause of death in children under 15 years old.
COANIQUEM is a nonprofit pediatric burn treatment center located in Chile that provides free treatment to over 8000 underserved young patients a year across Latin America. Healing Treasure is an immersive healing spatial design project developed for COANIQUEM’s satellite campus in Antofagasta, Chile, for real world implementation.
Healing Treasure proposes a new holistic strategy to combine narrative storytelling, wayfinding, and environmental graphics in a resourceful and high-impact way for 2D and 3D implementation. Building upon existing storytelling devices and characters, new stories and characters are created to celebrate the cultures of the North, aiming to empower and engage the young burn patients of COANIQUEM as they undergo treatment. The project seeks to provide confidence for the patients to take charge of their own healing journey, and find joy after a traumatic experience through a sense of control and self-sufficiency.
The staff working at COANIQUEM will be able to tell the process of treatment in a symbolic way that is friendly to children. The design for specific treatment rooms brings out the specific features of the north COANIQUEM campus, and uses colour as a storytelling element to support the patients in an emotional way before, during, and after treatment.
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