Winners Named for AIA's National Healthcare Design Awards

Two joint ventures, between Perkins + Will and Petersen Kolberg & Associates and HKS with UHS Building Solutions, were named, along with the Pacific Northwest-based firm Mahlum.

Nicholas Tamarin -- Interior Design, 8/6/2009

 
Images © Peter Eckert/Eckert & Eckert

Three healthcare facilities that tackle aesthetic, civic, urban and social concerns through design have been honored by the American Institute of Architects Academy of Architecture for Health with this year's National Healthcare Design Awards.

The jury, including Interior Design Hall of Famer Rand Elliott and Stephen Yundt of CO Architects, judged the candidates in three categories: built projects with construction budgets less than $25 million, built projects with budgets exceeding $25 million, and unbuilt projects.



Pacific Northwest-based firm Mahlum was recognized in the under-$25-million category for their work on the Providence North Portland Clinic in Oregon. Located on a former downtown brownfield site on the MAX mass-transit line, the building's expansive window wall reveals an interior divided into three day-lit pods, faced with murals viewable from both inside and out.

Another Portland project claimed top honors for projects over $25 million, the Peter O. Kohler Pavilion at the Oregon Health and Science University, a collaboration between Perkins + Will and Petersen Kolberg & Associates. The facility's south-facing floor-to-ceiling curtain wall provides natural daylight and views of Mt. Hood, while its north walls were articulated with punched windows in brick and stone to match the architecture of the historic campus buildings it faces.

 
Renderings by Michael Potts with m2studio

A second joint venture, this one between HKS and UHS Building Solutions, won in the unbuilt category. The firms proposed a cancer center hospital at a research institute, hypothetically located along a major Northeast river, which integrates water. Circulation paths between buildings become glass boxes that dematerialize and sit within the landscape.

"This year's entries reinforced the fact that the hospital of the future is here and bears little resemblance to facilities designed just a few years ago," says Yundt, the national jury chair.

Images courtesy of the American Institute of Architects.