Earlier this week, Douglas King spoke to us about the opportunities and challenges in the emerging field of Vertical Healthcare Design. This building typology has been gaining popularity due to increasing land-values in urban setting and the advantages of this building type. Douglas King, an expert in this field, has worked on several large-scale mixed use healthcare projects, some of which include - The Feinberg/Galter Pavilion, Prentice Women’s Hospital, etc.
The increasing need to reduce real estate costs for the expansion of healthcare facilities in urban settings has been a key driver in the development of high-rise healthcare facilities. This trend has been aided by the improvement in the elevator speed and quality of the elevator ride. Along with this, vertical healthcare design provides an opportunity to stack the outpatient component on top of the inpatient component. The increase in outpatient treatment has led to the need to co-locate these two functions close together. Traditional teaching medical centers, have the clinical, education and research components in different facilities. The Ability Institute of RIC has adopted the "bench to bed" regime, which combines all these three components together.
High-rise healthcare design brings with a lot of challenges. The structural grid in these buildings vary by healthcare modality. Minor offsets in the grid can accommodate the different requirements but the establishment of a universal grid is important. This provides both flexibility and adaptability for future modifications in the design. Future modifications and changing floor heights based pose structural challenges. Apart from this, it raises many other questions about façade design, safety regulations and MEP design.
Earlier this semester we had the opportunity of touring the Feinberg/Galter Pavilion, which is the 18th tallest hospital in the world. It is a state-of-the-art 2.1 million sq. ft. facility which won the 2016 Legacy Project Award.
References:
CTBUH 2016, Issue II
https://www.bdcnetwork.com/blog/are-you-ready-high-rise-hospitals
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