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St. Francis Hospital Patient Care Tower, Hartford, Connecticut. The Patient Care Tower or PCT was a completely new tower structure located at the center of a sprawling medical campus. Its purpose was to combine and reorganize both ambulatory and non-ambulatory clinical services for optimal healthcare delivery. The building was to become the new hub of the large medical center, while providing direct connections to its main parking structure and new Cancer Center building (also designed by TRO). The two views above show the entry facade which fronts a drop-off zone and public garden along the street. The building's massing is organized according to the principles the "composite building", that is, buildings which simultaneously establish strong centralized symmetries while letting various peripheral incidents bear force on the building at the lower levels. This lower-level registration of urban and site forces acting on the building gives the PCT a direct street-level meaning and civility while allowing programmatic issues to play themselves out with a level of authenticity that is normally compromised by purely symmetrical or formal designs. In short, the PCT is an extremely responsive and considerate building at the level of the street. The other part of a "composite building" strategy is that part which is symmetrical and formal and lends the building its primary physical disposition. In the PCT's case, the tower portion acts as a centralized mid-rise form, providing a punctuated roof terminus that is flanked by identical wings. The buildings overall internal organization reflects this with its centralized atrium and rotunda (view at left). The facade design is established through a rigorous analysis of the structural bay and medical module, which together comprise the clinical planning increment for optimal department organization and space efficiency. This "bay" condition is subdivided in half to establish the bay reading on the tower and plinth levels. Individual bay articulation and window development is characterized by an opposition of "surface and frame readings". Contextually the buildings facades and surface articulation relates strongly to the Gengras medical building adjacent to the PCT and to the new Cancer Center building. My primary responsibilities on the design team consisted of the conceptual and design development of the North and Genras towers, the Blue Line corridor, and departmental entry systems interior development. In addition, initiated design work on the public garden gates and light post. The design team produced a series of drawings for a PA Awards submission and although the project did not garner an award a letter from the jury acknowledged the projects' sophisticated and accomplished design strategy. |
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Top, entry to PCT from garden. Bot, rotunda vignette |
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Hoffman Heart, Axon |
site: |
Hartford, Connecticut |
design: |
1991-3 |
area: |
approx. 380,000 sf. |
design responsibility: |
design team member (as employee of TRO/ The Ritchie Organization, Inc.) |
statistics: |
The PCT, as it was called, was a new mid-rise tower that was designed to consolidate and integrate both ambulatory and non-ambulatory clinical services, while creating a memorable moment within the larger Hartford city context. The building would become a member of only a small network of high-rise buildings outside the city core. As such it was designed to related contextually to the common format of these "composite buildings" that acted as "points of arrival" on a semi-urban network of streets and roads. The design team's role was to design the massing, organization, public space structure, gardens and streetscape, and exterior facades, while assisting medical planners within the firm who worked with programmers to determine optimal inter and intradepartmental configurations for this very large building. |
client: |
Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center |
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