AIA Annual Health Awards Announced

WASHINGTON — The American Institute of Architects Academy of Architecture for Health recently selected its national health care design award recipients. The program showcases the best health care building designs and research, by selecting projects that display strategic strength in solving aesthetic, civic, urban and social dilemmas in functional and sustainable ways.

The award for projects that have already been built, with a construction cost totaling less than $25 million, went to the inpatient Willson Hospice facility at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital. The 34,000-square-foot structure in southwest Georgia sits on 210 acres of beautiful forested land. The building achieved a LEED Silver certification and was the first health care facility in the world to earn a Signature Silver Sanctuary designation by Audobon International. The project was designed by Chicago-based Perkins+Will, with Alabama firm Brasfield & Gorrie serving as construction manager.

Massachusetts General Hospital received the award for a fully constructed project totaling more than $25 million in construction cost for its Lunder Building. The multipurpose facility hosts 150 inpatient beds, procedural programs, forward-looking technologies, and new emergency and radiation oncology departments. The structure is sensibly organized, with the procedural program located on the lower levels and the inpatient beds in their own areas on the higher floors. The building completes an urban campus in downtown Boston by tying five previously existing facilities together. The feature most likely to be noticed by patients is a multi-story atrium garden that runs through all five inpatient floors. The award announcement recognized the structure for employing a performance-based design, “utilizing research to reduce falls and injury; minimizing medical error and infection; improving staff productivity and communication; and enhancing patient and family healing, comfort, and satisfaction.” The structure was designed by NBBJ out of Washington State, while New York-firm Turner Construction served as construction manager.

In the category of facilities yet to be built, Kenya Women and Children’s Wellness Center in Nairobi, Kenya took the prize. The project will consist of several new facilities, which will be part of the United States International University. The additions will include a 170-bed hospital, specific outpatient clinics for women and children, a family village, an institute of learning, a gender-violence recovery center and a forensic laboratory. The structures were constructed and organized specifically with the Kenyan climate in mind. The buildings are long and narrow and oriented east to west to minimize heat gain. Overhangs on the north and south faces provide shade, while the construction of east and west walls minimize direct solar radiation. The structures are naturally ventilated to best suit the temperate climate. The project was the second award winner designed by Perkins+Will.

The National Intrepid Center of Excellence won the award for innovations in planning and design research, which allows both built and yet-to-be-built projects to apply. The building will house efforts to advance the research, diagnosis and treatment of traumatic brain injuries. The facility will focus on the wide range of possible negative outcomes associated with traumatic brain injury (TBI), including cognitive, physical and psychological disabilities. The structure utilizes a multidisciplinary clinic concept that mixes clinical and research functions, including sophisticated technology like advanced imaging and virtual reality, which will go side by side with efforts to allow families to be deeply involved in patients’ recovery processes. The award announcement explained the center “is a prototype for similar military and civilian TBI centers worldwide, and will serve as the primary hub of a network of satellite clinics now under development.”

SmithGroupJJR, out of Detroit, designed the project with New York firm Plaza Construction serving as construction manager.