A Beacon Of Healing

"We've been doing hospitals since 1943, when the firm started," NBBJ partner Richard Dallam says. And they've remained a strong point. The ground-up E.W. and Mary Firstenburg Tower, phase one of a renewal project at Southwest Washington Medical Center in Vancouver, is the firm's latest tour de force.

That's because NBBJ put the human factor first. Dallam's team of architects and designers spent nine months observing and analyzing the hospital experience from the point of view of patients, visitors, and medical professionals. Dallam went so far as to have his staff push him around on a gurney as well as to follow in one surgeon's footsteps for a day. "He didn't sit down for 12 hours," Dallam reports. This "vision-driven preprogram," says Interior Design Hall of Fame member Rysia Suchecka, the partner in charge of interiors, also entailed calling on NBBJ's in-house anthropologist and industrial designer to study behavior.

"We added inspiration, beauty, and healing to the usual survey of operations, functions, and space programming," she says. Not that there wasn't plenty of the latter during the more than three years of design and construction for the 307,000-square-foot Firstenburg Tower, which is a full-service cardiovascular, orthopedic, and neurology facility.

The cardiovascular unit, with its operating rooms and lab, is on the ground level. On two are more surgical suites, bringing the total to 15. The third floor is mostly given over to mechanicals, but staff also use it for access to a private roof deck. Above, 144 single rooms compose the five patient floors.

Innovation started with a basic question: How do you ameliorate the fear factor? Start at the entry. NBBJ replaced an existing parking lot with a garden, dispatching cars to an underground garage. The size of three city blocks, the green space includes a soothing waterfall.

Clearly visible behind a wall of glass, the lobby could well be mistaken for reception at a five-star hotel. A ribbon of luminous copper-painted drywall swoops high above shining cross-cut travertine flooring inset with mahogany-colored carpet. Patients and visitors check in at a painted-metal desk topped by a counter in eye-catching translucent yellow resin.

"The lobby is an animal of its own," Suchecka remarks. It's meant to offer all the amenities visitors might need, including retail, and to be a draw for the community—a health resource center as well as a daylit, lofty space in which to celebrate, say, a good diagnosis.

In the adjacent lounge, the vibe skews ski lodge with a fireplace and columns clad in split limestone and seating upholstered in red, orange, and brown. For the café, think wine bar. Tall stools line a C-shape gray Corian counter. Flat-screen monitors are set, at ascending heights, into the limestone-clad wall beneath the staircase to the second floor.

The patient floors are light, bright, and calm, with hallways painted warm cream and pale teal instead of antiseptic white or gruesome green. To reduce din, so people actually get the crucial rest that's prescribed, NBBJ carpeted the floor and placed utility closets elsewhere—no closets means no banging. All corridors have a window at each end. Along their length, daylight from patient rooms filters through the frosted film on their sliding glass doors. (The doors are a generous 5 ½ feet wide to prevent gurney bumping.)

Patient rooms come with sleep sofas for visitors. A few feet away, a built-in resin counter serves as a desk before wrapping upward, around an armoire faced in silver plastic laminate. Applied to the wall, seven black capital letters and a movable magnetic orange frame allow patients to count down the days of the week till going home.

Until that time comes, visitors need to get out of the way when staff arrive for treatments. At many hospitals, there's no place to go. But NBBJ cured that ill, too. "We thought about a front-porch scenario," Suchecka explains. Just outside each doorway, she placed a bench, its rounded seat of creamy white Corian perched on posts of brushed stainless steel. In the evenings, when fluorescent fixtures come on underneath, each bench seems to be floating in its own gentle pool of light.

From left: In front of the E.W. and Mary Firstenburg Tower, part of the Southwest Washington Medical Center in Vancouver, are gardens and a waterfall. Columns clad in Idaho limestone line the lobby's window wall, framed in painted aluminum; the custom desk, a painted metal composite, has a resin counter.

Clockwise from left: The entry's overhang is up-lit. Leading to the second floor's surgical suites, the staircase combines limestone, stainless steel, and glass. Flooring in the café is travertine; counters are Corian.

Clockwise from top: Gypsum-board wall panels flank the elevator lobby, which has an end wall of cast glass. NBBJ designed the graphics for the cardiovascular reception area. On each patient floor, a waiting area features Lauren Rottet's lounge chairs, Burkhard Vogtherr's armchairs, and Brent Comber's cube table.

Clockwise from top right: In each patient room, a custom sleep sofa is upholstered in wool and nylon. Outside stand a nurse's station and a custom bench in Corian and stainless steel. Staff enjoy an ipé terrace off the mechanicals floor. Equipment in the catheterization lab diagnoses brain and vascular disease.

CUSTOM STRIP LIGHTS (EXTERIOR), CUSTOM END PANELS (ELEVATOR LOBBY): PETER DAVID STUDIO. CUSTOM CARPET (LOBBY): TUFENKIAN CARPETS. COLUMN COVERS: MÓZ DESIGNS. CUSTOM DESK COUNTER: BAM BAM DESIGNS. TABLES (LOBBY, ELEVATOR LOBBY): ALLERMUIR. CUSTOM DESK (LOBBY), CUSTOM SIDE PANELS (ELEVATOR LOBBY): FORMS + SURFACES. ARMCHAIRS (LOBBY, WAITING AREA): DAVIS FURNITURE. SOFA, LOUNGE CHAIRS (LOBBY, WAITING AREA), STOOLS (CAFÉ), CHAIRS (ELEVATOR LOBBY): BRAYTON INTERNATIONAL. ARMCHAIR BACK, SIDE FABRIC, LOUNGE CHAIR FABRIC (LOBBY, WAITING AREA), STOOL FABRIC (CAFÉ), SOFA SEAT FABRIC (PATIENT ROOM): MAHARAM. ARMCHAIR SEAT FABRIC (LOBBY, WAITING AREA), SOFA BACK FABRIC (PATIENT ROOM): CARNEGIE. COUNTER MATERIAL (CAFÉ), BENCH SEAT MATERIAL (HALL): DUPONT. CUSTOM GYPSUM PANELS (ELEVATOR LOBBY): MODULAR ARTS. CHAIR FABRIC: SINA PEARSON TEXTILES. CUBE TABLE (WAITING AREA): BRENT COMBER ORIGINALS. BOLSTER FABRIC: MOMENTUM GROUP. PANEL FABRIC: KNOLL. FLOORING: TOLI INTERNATIONAL. TABLE (PATIENT ROOM): HARTER. PENDANT FIXTURE: VISTOSI LIGHTING. DESK MATERIAL: RICHLITE COMPANY. ARMOIRE SURFACING: NEVAMAR DECORATIVE SURFACES. WHITEBOARD: ABET. CHAIR (PATIENT ROOM), CHARTING STATION (HALL): STEELCASE. CUSTOM SOFA (PATIENT ROOM), CUSTOM BENCH (HALL): BRANDRUD. FLOORING (PATIENT ROOM, LAB), CEILING TILE: ARMSTRONG. CUSTOM DOORS (HALL): OVERHEAD DOOR CORPORATION. CARPET: MASLAND CARPETS AND RUGS. MEDICAL EQUIPMENT (LAB): KONIKLIJKE PHILIPS ELECTRONICS. EXAM LIGHTS, BOOMS: GETINGE GROUP. ARCHITECTURAL STONE: WESTERN TILE & MARBLE CONTRACTORS. FLOORING: SPECCERAMICS. LANDSCAPING CONSULTANT: BERGER PARTNERSHIP. ENGINEERS: HOPPER DENNIS JELLISON (CIVIL); KPFF CONSULTING ENGINEERS (STRUCTURAL); NOTKIN (MECHANICAL); SPARLING (ELECTRICAL). GENERAL CONTRACTOR: HOFFMAN-ANDERSEN OF WASHINGTON.