For Immediate Release: April 4, 2006
Aging Medical Office Campus Transformed Into Healing Environment
Minneapolis, MN - For decades, three 12-story office towers, built in the 1970s and 80s amid a sea of surface parking lots, have served as the primary clinical campus for Saint Francis Hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As newer medical facilities were built nearby, the aging office towers began to lose their competitive edge. Today, however, the complex has been transformed into the lushly landscaped, Warren Medical Office Park.
The transformation was master planned by HGA Architects and Engineers (HGA) and showcases the stunning new 177,000-square-foot Natalie Building. The glass-clad medical office building and ambulatory surgery center feature a four-story rotunda with an indoor garden, an atrium adjoining the surgery waiting area, and a roof plaza with skylights into the operating recovery room.
The Natalie Building is also the campus' new welcoming hub, and is linked with the existing hospital, three office towers, and parking via elevated sky bridges. As part of the master plan, HGA converted the area's extensive surface parking into a series of perimeter parking structures connected via elevated skywalks to the towers. Subsequently, the asphalt parking areas were removed and planted with trees, native grasses and gardens to create a natural setting interwoven with walking paths that reinforce the healing environment of the new medical campus. A new campus parkway clearly leads to each of the medical office buildings.
HGA designed the Natalie Building to qualify for the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED certification. The team carefully considered the building's orientation on the site, its mechanical systems and energy use, and indoor-air quality and materials selection, in adherence to LEED principles.
The Demand for Design. Before HGA began working on the project, the client recognized the need for a well designed masterplan. "The area was never planned as a campus. Buildings just popped up," says Thomas Cooper, Chair and CEO of the Warren Professional Building Corporation, which owns and operates the campus in support of the Saint Francis Health System.
In addition, the three precast-concrete towers had long, narrow footprints, which were ideal for the one- or two- doctor practices, common a generation ago, but not adequate for today's larger physician groups.
Architecturally, the towers - which were "industrial-looking and hard-edged," Cooper explains - didn't conform to today's standards for welcoming and healing healthcare design. "We wanted a new campus hub that was forward-looking, that wouldn't make the old towers look shabby but would update them by creating a strong architectural contrast," says Cooper of the iconic steel-and-glass Natalie Building, which also offers an open, transparent welcome to patients. Overall, he adds, the rejuvenation "has completely changed the campus' image into one that reflects the technical prowess and healing capacity of this health care system."
The Natalie Building. The central component of the new campus, and the first structure visitors and patients see, is the Natalie Building. The building's four-story rotunda, clad in high-performance, silkscreen-patterned glass, is topped by an undulating roof; a form that takes its inspiration from the curving forms and shapes prominent in Tulsa's historic Art Deco buildings. Just below the roofline, a band of clerestory windows outlines the conference center at the top of the rotunda.
The broad rooflines atop the rotunda, as well as on two other sections of the building, also perform as sunscreens, especially on the building's south and west walls. Those other two roofs are held aloft by metal supports rendered in an abstract tree form, which references the extensive tree plantings throughout the newly landscaped campus. Limestone (quarried from within 500 miles of the site, per LEED guidelines) anchors the glass-walled Natalie Building, and extends into the landscape where it's used for walls and walkways. Team members Thornton-Tomasetti Engineers (structural), CCRD Partners (mechanical and electrical), and Sisemore Weisz Associates (civil) worked with HGA throughout the project.
Inside the building's rotunda, which is adjacent to the main lobby, an indoor garden with stone walls circles a fountain.
"This is a place of respite for anyone on the campus to enjoy," says Dan Polachek, architect and design principal, HGA. "As a symbol for the renewal of life, the rotunda's indoor park and fountain provide space for reflection and interaction for patients, waiting friends and families, and staff alike."
The rotunda's users come from throughout the building's 42,000-square-foot ambulatory care center (with supporting radiology and laboratory areas) that includes eight operating bays; the 11,000-square-foot physical therapy area; and the 74,000-square-feet of leasehold space for physician offices. This unique combination of spaces offers specialist physicians - including surgeons and orthopedists - the efficiency of performing outpatient surgery and having office space in one building.
Master Planning for Healing. In order to attract larger physician groups and remain adaptable to changing clinic layouts, the building has a deeper and more flexible footprint than the existing towers. This larger footprint also allowed HGA to design in amenities not usually found in a healthcare building. For instance, because the surgery center on the first level has a bigger floor plate than the upper levels, HGA designed a large roof garden over the surgery area, but included skylights that allow light into the recovery room below.
To further enhance the healing aspects of the environment, the outpatient recovery area also includes a wall paneled in a warm-toned wood, and a ceiling soffit whose undulating curve mimics that of the floor pattern. Pre-surgery and operating room corridors feature floors with an artistic, abstracted leaf pattern. And the waiting area outside of surgery opens to a two-story atrium with large expanses of greenery and a fountain.
"My number-one goal throughout the building's interior was to create a stress-reducing environment," says Christine Vickery, interior designer, HGA.
"I didn't want the building to feel like a clinic or hospital. When people walk in, there isn't any stress attached to the look of the building itself."
A soothing color palette, regional artwork, and glass doors in the building's interior lessen the sense of the Natalie Building as a healthcare institution.
Vickery also incorporated "green" or LEED acceptable materials throughout the interior including recycled paint; natural stone floors; cabinetry, nurse's stations and reception desks made out of a crushed-sunflower, bio-composite material; and a "green" backer board behind the wood paneling.
Color, pattern and art - rather than verbal signage - were used to create easy wayfinding throughout the Natalie Building. Vickery coordinated with the lighting designers to ensure a variety of light sources that increase comfort levels and highlight key spaces to enhance wayfinding.
Extending Wayfinding. HGA also extended the wayfinding out from the Natalie Building and into the rest of the campus. Enclosed, elevated skyways connect the Natalie Building with the pre-existing office buildings and the hospital. Despite the site's challenging topography, Polachek explains, "we wanted the skyways all on the same level so people don't have to take elevators en route from one building to another. All the skyways occur at the fourth level of the new building and tie into the second level of the hospital."
The four skyways - some of which are 50 feet off the ground because of the hilly topography - that connect with the medical buildings are held up by metal supports whose design echoes that of the roof supports used outside the Natalie Building.
The medical buildings also, in turn, are connected via sky bridges to designated parking ramps (able to accommodate 1,600 vehicles) at the perimeter of the campus, offering patients and visitors speedy, sheltered access between the ramps and the facilities they serve.
Two of the garages are unobtrusively built into the surrounding hillsides, and the walls that remain exposed have been planted with year-around vines, which will eventually grow into "green" walls that cover the concrete walls. A new s-curved boulevard with four distinct intersections leads drivers through the campus and to their clearly marked destinations, as each parking ramp also shares the name of the building it services.
"It's what you might call a shopping-mall approach to vehicular access and parking," Polachek explains. "But this kind of easy access is really important for physicians in multi-specialty clinics. They want their clients to park on the level that's aligned with their clinic floor." In the areas at the heart of the old campus that were formerly occupied by surface asphalt parking lots, HGA's master plan designated a park-like setting. Landscape architecture was performed by the MESA Design Group. They installed lawns, flower gardens and over 300 trees.
Besides reinforcing the ambiance of a healing environment, this new central greenspace enhances the campus' overall aesthetic by providing more attractive views from all campus buildings, old and new.
:: View Natalie Building
HGA Contact: Julie Luers (612) 758-4000 e-mail JLuers@hga.com
Media Contact: Susan Evans, Evans Larson (612) 338-6999 e-mail susan@evanslarson.com