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Cleveland Clinic – Hillcrest Cancer Center

Mayfield Heights, Ohio, USA

º£½ÇÊÓƵ’s integrated engineering and consultancy expertise was key to realising a technically complex yet elegantly simple design for Hillcrest Hospital’s cancer center expansion.

Hillcrest Hospital is a comprehensive care facility that is part of the prestigious Cleveland Clinic hospital system, one of the highest-ranking health systems in the world. A 23,000ft² addition and renovation to the hospital’s cancer center has created a new entrance to the facility, enhancing patient access and experience.

A 23,000ft² addition and renovation to the hospital’s cancer center has created a bright new entrance to the facility, enhancing patient access and the overall user experience.

The centrepiece for the project is a 54ft-long skylight that floods natural light into the space.

We conducted a thermal comfort analysis to demonstrate that the skylight would not adversely impact the comfort of building users while providing views to the outdoors.

Our facades team ensured against thermal bridges and overheating and supported the best choice of glazing that reduces glare.

Challenge

Working closely with the wider design team, led by Perspectus Architecture, º£½ÇÊÓƵ was engaged to deliver building services (MEP/FP), structural, and facade engineering, lighting design, as well as building physics consultancy, including assessing condensation risk, glare, and thermal comfort analysis.

The extension to the existing building, which spans 10,500ft², also expands the second-floor oncology area, creating a new sheltered valet drop-off area for patients that replaces an unwelcoming 1970s facade. This new addition is designed to provide cancer infusion patients with a warm, homelike space that encourages interaction.

It features large windows and added natural light courtesy of a large skylight over the two-story common lobby space.

The design of this expansive skylight provided one of the key challenges for the project – both structurally – the aesthetic aspiration was for it to be self-supporting, without the encumberment of columns, but also in terms of balancing thermal comfort within the space. The skylight also posed a challenge for our building services engineers – as the HVAC design needed to provide comfort while circumnavigating the featured dome. Fire protection and electrical systems also had to be incorporated into the design of the bracing for the skylight.

Solution

The new construction is located immediately adjacent to an existing two-story wing of Hillcrest Hospital, which was built in 2002. The new structural frame is both vertically and laterally isolated from the existing structure. But an additional 12,500ft² space within the original cancer center was also renovated as part of this project.

Funded by a generous lead gift from The Lozick Family Foundation, a longtime supporter of Cleveland Clinic, the new state-of-the-art facility incorporates the healing environments and patient-centric approaches found at the pioneering Taussig Cancer Center on Cleveland Clinic’s main campus.

A unique partnership with Cleveland Clinic’s Office of Patient Experience during the building’s design phase has led to transformative solutions and innovative physical spaces that patients intuitively understand and find comforting. The new structure includes elements such as abundant daylight and views of greenspace, natural elements and specially selected artwork.

The renovations to the existing structure include an entrance leading to a central patient check-in, as well as valet parking and convenient patient drop-off. A direct connection between the building’s lower-level radiation therapy services and the second-floor oncology spaces has also been created. The barrel-vaulted design allows the impressive skylight to stretch across much of the new interior space without the need for supporting columns.

Our building physics team modelled the optimal balance between daylighting and solar gain and glare and worked with our facades experts on the optioneering for a glazing system that uses a glass, lightly tinted in grey, in a way that is imperceptible against the sky, but is sufficient to mitigate against thermal discomfort.

Value

The project has created a welcoming new entrance to the clinic and a bright and vibrant space where patients, families and staff can interact under the stunning new skylight.

Our multidisciplinary team delivered a range of insightful solutions to enable the creation of a feature that looks simple and elegant, but in reality, was an extremely complex and challenging piece of engineering.

It has been warmly received, and the general sentiment is that it is a wonderful space.

David Berlekamp, Cleveland Clinic Buildings & Design