2025 AN Best of Design Awards Recognize LifeServe Blood Center Headquarters

LifeServe Blood Center Headquarters in Johnston, IA, is recognized as a 2025 AN Best of Design Award recipient by The Architect’s Newspaper. In its 13th year of the program, the AN Best of Design Awards honor the impactful and meaningful work of architects and designers and focus on several criteria, including innovation, creative use of new technology, sustainability, and good design.

“I thought this was a sophisticated concept for its typology, and the elevation is just beautiful.”— Rossana Hu, Founding Partner at Neri&Hu Design and Research Office (Juror, 2025 AN Best of Design Awards)

Serving more than 170 hospitals across the Midwest region, LifeServe Blood Center Headquarters is a new office space and blood donation center in Johnston, IA, that aims to support the organization’s vital work within the community and their mission to save lives.

The design of a new headquarters building was an opportunity for LifeServe Blood Center to study and rethink its processes to enhance overall function and daily workflows and to create a positive shift in workplace culture. The design team held visioning sessions with LifeServe’s stakeholders, determining a series of key drivers for the new facility, including an emphasis on collaboration, flow, mission, and process.

The organization’s work is innately community-centered, both serving and working in collaboration with community members each day. It was important to LifeServe that their new headquarters facility reflect this community-focused mission and work by establishing an intentional public presence in Johnston, IA, encouraging the community to engage with and be a part of LifeServe.

The resulting design is a beautiful, welcoming, and functional facility that enhances LifeServe’s approach to addressing the complexities of blood movement and processing while encouraging community members to make blood donation a lifelong habit.