Prescription for Design: Taking the Non-Clinical Approach to Healthcare Projects
BY NORA BURBA TRULSSON
Peak Drive Medical Building, Las Vegas, Nevada
Larry Staples, AIA | JMA Architects, Inc. | Las Vegas, Nevada
PHOTOGRAPHY BY TOM CRAIG/OPULENCE STUDIOS
 Peak Drive Medical Building by JMA Architects, Inc. of Las Vegas. The design of the building's north side was inspired by an MRI image, the technology offered by the property's main tenant and owner.
For an architectural firm, often the best client is a repeat client. Both parties know each other's work styles and basic design preferences; there's less time spent in the getting-to-know-you phase.
Such was the case with the Peak Drive medical office building, located at the Las Vegas Technology Center on the city's northwest side. The project was a repeat collaboration between JMA Architects, Inc. and Dr. David Steinberg, principal of Steinberg Diagnostic Medical Imaging. Steinberg's firm provides imaging services, such as CT scans, X-rays, MRIs and ultrasounds, at several Las Vegas locations.
"We've worked on four of those imaging centers for Dr. Steinberg," explains Larry Staples, AIA, JMA's Healthcare Studio manager, "so we know that he is design-conscious and likes to have the high-tech nature of his business reflected in the architecture of his buildings."
When the client opted to consolidate his firm's administrative functions into one location, he once again contacted JMA to do the project. "The plan was to design a building for his administration, near one of his imaging centers," explains Staples, who spearheaded the project with a team from JMA. "His firm would be the anchor tenant in approximately half of the building, while the other half would be leased as medical offices."
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A floating staircase leads from the lobby to the Steinberg offices. |
The two-acre site for the new building is in a medical corridor near MountainView Hospital, with views of distant mountains. The two-story, 40,000-square-foot building's floorplan includes a shared first-floor lobby and shelled-out first-floor space for future medical offices. Steinberg Diagnostic Medical Imaging occupies the entire second floor. Two balconies allow the occupants of the second floor to have access to the outdoors without having to go back downstairs.
"We wanted forms and materials for this building to reflect the business within," says Staples, "yet we also wanted to link it to its desert setting." The core of the building is clad in desert-hued stone tile, wrapped by outer layers of building done in a sandy-toned EIFS surface. At the parking-lot side, a dramatic, metal-clad wall angles out from main building, signaling both the entrance and the medical machinery of the main occupant.
On the north side of the building, the design team took the medical imagery even further. "We took the approach of an MRI image—a slice of something," says Staples. "We 'sliced off' the second floor of the building visually and used a full wall of mullionless glass, so when you look inside, you can see inside the building—the ceiling system, the conduit, the exposed mechanical." Indeed, the north side of the second story, which juts out above the first, appears as though it's been neatly sliced off and replaced with a sheet of glass.
An angled, metal-clad wall marks the building's main entry. |
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Inside, the design team repeated many of the exterior materials, including using the stone tile as the flooring and to clad the elevator surrounds. Metal was also repeated on the angular, open-riser staircase that leads from the lobby past a bank of windows and up to the Steinberg offices.
Completed in 2006, the building has provided stylish quarters for the medical imaging firm and is beginning to attract like-minded tenants for the first floor. The building also won a Merit Award for its design from the Las Vegas chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP).
And, yes, says Staples, more projects with this particular client are a distinct possibility.
Architecture and interior design: JMA Architecture, Inc., Las Vegas, NV; (702) 731-2033 or www.jmaarch.com.
The Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes, Aurora, Colorado
David Pfeifer, AIA | Anderson Mason Dale | Denver, Colorado
PHOTOGRAPHY BY FRANK OOMS
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A glass staircase tower signals the center's entrance. To the left, the bean-shaped structure is the children's playroom. |
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Most people know Barbara Davis as the wife of the late billionaire Marvin Davis, who once owned the Denver Broncos, Twentieth Century Fox and the Beverly Hills Hotel, among other enterprises. But Barbara Davis became known as a high-profile philanthropist after one of her daughters was diagnosed with diabetes while the family lived in Denver. Davis began a lifelong pursuit to fund childhood diabetes research with the 1980 opening of the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes at the old University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver.
The center underwent numerous expansions and renovations. Several years ago, it was determined that the center would be relocated to the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colorado, which was once the Fitzsimons Army Medical Center. In 2001, the center chose the Denver architectural firm Anderson Mason Dale to design its new $23 million, 110,000-square-foot center at Anschutz.
"The medical campus is one square mile of land," explains David Pfeifer, AIA, a principal of Anderson Mason Dale who led the Barbara Davis project. "It's now home to the University of Colorado hospital and the Denver Children's Hospital. The Barbara Davis Center was to be located in the epicenter, on a large campus green, across from an old, Art Deco Army hospital."
 The curved forms of the reception desk echo the shape of the children's playroom.
As such, Pfeifer explains, the new structure had to make a nod to the historical structure across the green in both height and mass. "We wanted the new center to be an appropriate foreground piece to the old hospital," he notes.
Working with an Anderson Mason Dale team that included architects Jim Miller, AIA; Todd Swarts, Dan Bishop and Jennifer Toll, Pfeifer began researching other medical facilities for children. "We found a lot of the facilities had 'visual noise' for the kids-colors, patterns and murals," he says. "We intentionally decided that the design should be restrained and calming so that kids wouldn't be overstimulated. We opted out of trains and bunnies."
The architectural team created a plan for the building that placed the clinical functions of the center, including the treatment areas and the eye clinic, on the first and second floors of the four-story building, and the research areas on the upper floors. The first-floor lobby area includes a long, gallery-like waiting area, open to the second floor. Also on the first floor is a key element of the center: a children's playroom, with its curved, bean-shaped form jutting forth from the rectangular plan of the main building.
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A long bank of windows illuminates the gallery waiting area. |
Building materials include brick masonry and limestone, a link to the historic hospital and other buildings on the campus, as well as aluminum-panel cladding and window framing. At the front, a row of two-story, louver-shaded windows provide daylighting for the gallery waiting area; second and third floors are also illuminated with rows of louver-shaded windows. A staircase tower at the entrance is also clad in windows and shines, beacon-like, when lit at dusk.
Inside, the Anderson Mason Dale designers collaborated with Gallun Snow Associates, Inc. of Denver on the interior design. Interior walls are clad in warm birch wood, and the flooring throughout much of the first-floor waiting area is charcoal slate. Smaller furniture groupings along the gallery waiting area allow families a bit of privacy while they sit. The curved form of the reception desk and its lighting soffit reflect the form of the children's playroom.
A conference room overlooks the waiting area. |
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"We know that families are often anxious when they come to the center," Pfeifer explains, "so we wanted the interior to be warm, soothing and tactile—not covered in vinyl. In fact, there's a radiant-heat system in the floor so kids can be comfortable sitting on the floor during the winter months."
The playroom, just off the gallery, is staffed full time and includes a climbing structure, playhouse, television, books and crafts—just the thing to occupy young patients and restless siblings.
The completed center comforts its patients and provides hope, as well as honors its namesake patroness. It also won Anderson Mason Dale a Merit Award from the Denver Chapter AIA's 2005 design competition.
Architecture: Anderson Mason Dale, Denver, CO; (303) 294-9448 or www.amdarchitects.com.
Interiors: Gallun Snow Associates, Inc., Denver, CO; (303) 433-9500 or www.gallunsnow.com.
Landscape architecture: Wenk Associates, Denver, CO; (303) 628-0003 or www.wenkla.com.
Builder: J.E. Dunn Construction, Denver, CO: (303) 753-8988 or www.jedunn.com.
Laboratory consultant: Research Facilities Design, San Diego, CA; (619) 297-0159 or www.rfd.com.
Kronos Optimal Health Centre, Phoenix, Arizona
Jeremy Lear | Evolution Design | Tempe, Arizona
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK BOISCLAIR
 A curved glass and maple wall, suspended from the ceiling, encloses the lobby's seating area. Armchairs are by Bernhardt, art is from Phoenix Art Group.
Most doctors' offices are numbingly the same when it comes to interior planning and design: a basic lobby and reception area, barren-to-bland exam rooms and maybe a functional nurses' station somewhere in the middle.
The Kronos Optimal Health Centre is decidedly out of the box when it comes to its practice. Though staffed by physicians and nurses, the center is a non-insurance facility that emphasizes preventive and longevity healthcare. As such, it also offers the services of exercise physiologists and nutritionists, as well as laboratory, radiographic and functional assessment programs. The center appeals to a decidedly mature and upscale clientele and has a special executive health program for stressed-out CEOs. Its location is not in a medical plaza, but rather in Kierland Commons, a sophisticated retail complex in Phoenix.
 Materials and colors are repeated in the facility's conference room.
Therefore, when it came to an interior that would sum up its medical philosophy, the decision-makers at the center didn't want the traditional doctor's-office look. "The center had to be spa-like and comfortable," explains designer Jeremy Lear, a principal with Evolution Design, who spearheaded the project. "As it is located in a commercial building with retail on the first floor, the look had to reflect what was around it."
The 15,300-square-foot floorplan splits the center between the building's second and third floors, with the second floor containing the lobby and reception, doctors' offices and exam rooms, nurses' stations, procedure and treadmill rooms, lab area and blood pressure room. The third floor was designed to include mostly non-patient areas, including offices, locker rooms and exercise facilities for employees.
 The nurses' station follows the curve of the ceiling detail.
"We chose a curved theme for the interior," says Lear, who was inspired by the curved lines of the building itself. "We used it in the interior walls, desk areas and even the corridors." Working with a neutral palette of blacks and browns, Lear suggested materials that hinted at modern luxury: maple for flooring and millwork, honed travertine countertops and surfaces, glass and stainless steel. "We also looked for overscale, plush furnishings for comfort."
Clients first encounter the reception desk, a curving piece made of light- and dark-stained maple, topped by honed travertine set on a stainless plate. The lobby's seating area is enclosed by curved walls that are suspended from the ceiling, one of which is inset with patterned glass bearing the Kronos logo. An upholstered, high-backed banquette offers a comfortable place to wait and read, as do handsome, simple Bernhardt armchairs.
 Exam rooms are furnished comfortably, as clients tend to check in for up to a full day.
Back in the patient areas, the nurses' stations follow curvatures of the corridors and ceiling details, and are made with materials similar to the reception desk. Each carpeted exam room is furnished with a sofa, armchair, desk and chair and features its own terrazzo-floored bathroom, fitted with a glass vessel sink set in a translucent counter. "Clients tend to be here a long time-often a half day or full day," says Lear. "We wanted the exam rooms to be comfortable places for them to be in for that long, so there's even a place for them to plug in their computers and eat a catered lunch."
The center's interior spaces were finished off with a sophisticated light plan that includes numerous ceiling pendants
and with artwork from Phoenix Art Group. "We were aiming for small pops of color with the art," explains Lear. "We wanted the images to be simple, abstract and calming."
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Client bathrooms are fitted with glass sinks, illuminated by pendant lighting. |
The completed project not only pleased its users, but also won Evolution Design several recent office-design awards including First Place from the IIDA Southwest Chapter's design competition and First Place from the Arizona North Chapter ASID's competition.
Interior design: Evolution Design, Tempe, AZ; (480) 921-0880 or www.evolutiondesigninc.com.
Builder: Kennedy Design Build, Mesa, AZ (480) 607-6441.
Millwork: Fine Line Cabinetry, Phoenix, AZ (480) 303-0222.
Bernhardt furnishings: Goodmans, Phoenix, AZ (602) 263-1110 or www.goodmans.info.
Artwork: Phoenix Art Group, Inc., Phoenix, AZ; (602) 241-1060 or www.phoenixartgroup.com.
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