By GIOVANNA BREU for the New York Times Published: June 3, 2022

It was one of the first meetings of the Kid’s Advisory Board of Children’s Memorial Hospital, and 17-year-old Kendall Ciesemier was telling the high-priced architects designing the new $915 million hospital that they needed to go back to the drawing board.

It was imperative there be an outdoor space, she said, a place to escape from the confines of the hospital. The architects resisted, telling Kendall that it would be difficult to design a space that could withstand the extremes of heat and cold.

No, she insisted, “we have to have windows open and sun beating down.”

Kendall, a senior at Wheaton North High School, is one of a dozen teenagers on the board, all of whom have spent time in hospitals and are dealing with life-threatening conditions or are chronically ill.

Kendall, who suffers from biliary atresia, said she was adamant about the space because, when she was 11, she spent a summer hospitalized after two liver transplants. “When I was well enough, my dad would sneak me down to the hospital courtyard at night,” she said. “It was so peaceful and calming to be outside.”

Her plea got a sympathetic hearing from the hospital’s planning team. Two outside “pocket gardens” were added at either end of the 5,000-square-foot enclosed Crown garden that juts out 11 stories above Superior Street. “I was so impressed that my small idea turned into an enormous aspect of the hospital,” she said. “They took me seriously. That was awesome.”

Parents wanted a lot of interactive activities in the garden, but the teenagers argued that they did not want it to be filled with “junk,” said Mikyoung Kim, a landscape architect. “They wanted a quiet place where they could escape the beeping and other hospital noises.”

The former Children’s Memorial, now the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, is scheduled to be complete in summer 2012. It is named for Ms. Lurie, a Chicago philanthropist, and her late husband. Ms. Lurie, who was once a critical care nurse at Children’s Memorial, pledged $100 million for the medical center, in the Northwestern Hospital complex in Streeterville.

“These children have a unique view as to what ‘works’ and what doesn’t as it relates to the environment, food, therapy and other matters,” Ms. Lurie said.

The board also critiques proposals from more than 20 of the city’s top cultural organizations for the hospital’s family and public spaces. The Shedd Aquarium offered a fiberglass whale and its calf to hang in the lobby. The Adler Planetarium offered pictures from the Hubble Telescope.

“We thought a picture of a sea lion was perfect for the second-floor emergency treatment room,” said Bruce Komiske, the project’s design and construction chief. “It was cute, oversized and had the right artistic background.” Then the proposals were shown to the advisory board. “They said, ‘We are on medications for pain and other drugs,’ ” Mr. Komiske said. “ ‘This sea lion is bigger than your parents staring at you.’ ”

Smaller images in a more pastoral setting are planned.

When someone proposed cricket noises, Ellen Gordon, 17, protested: “No way. You don’t want a thousand stimulating ideas going on in the garden.”

Though other pediatric hospitals have involved cultural organizations in their planning, Mr. Komiske said it had never before been done on this scale.

“Children’s hospitals have set a new standard for adult hospitals,” he said.