Photography by Louis Sullivan
Plans called for an efficient 160,000-square-foot, Class A medical office building, including a minimum of 12,000-square-feet of contiguous space for the relocation of Scottsdale Memorial Hospital's residency program, and parking for 350 vehicles.
The project enhances the connection between the medical campus and downtown Scottsdale through form, color, landscape and materials. An arcade located along 2nd Street provides a shaded pedestrian linkage to the retail district to the north and an edge to the campus. Brown Avenue to the west of the project has been extended to the north completing the grid of the downtown area and moving vehicular traffic from the center of the campus to the periphery.
Two distinctively separate elements -a three-story medical office building and a multi-tiered parking structure - are integrated into a single, cohesive unit through the orientation to a central courtyard, and the use of materials, scale and detailing. The majority of the patients utilizing the building arrive by automobile and park in the parking structure on the south portion of the site. One of the critical design challenges faced is the access of patients to the medical suites. The parking structure and medical building floor plates, linked via pedestrian bridges, create three "first" floors with direct patient access. In response to this arrival sequence, the outdoor courtyard becomes the building's lobby developing a central focus for the two pieces of the project. Shade from landscaping, a connection to the pedestrian streets of downtown and wrapping the building's circulation system around the courtyard serve to create a vibrant human-scaled space that takes advantage of the unique southwestern climate.
EIFS by Senergy and integrally colored red masonry create a transition from the white stucco of the main hospital tower to the brick and adobe buildings of downtown Scottsdale. The curved masonry wall, laid in a detailed pattern including bands of hone-finish masonry, integrates the two pieces of the project and responds to Brown Avenue to the west. The building's fenestration is recessed two feet from the face of the spandrel panel to provide protection from the harsh desert sun. Two distinctive building columns break the horizontal building mass into a smaller human scale.
All suites on the plaza level and second level of the building are entered from the courtyard via balconies and breezeways. Interior corridors are utilized only for access to smaller suites on the north end of the third floor. This circulation system results in an impressive rentable/usable ratio of 1.03. Various general practice and specialty care suites have been developed in conjunction with the building, including SMH's BreastHealth Center, the Heuser Family Practice Residency Program, and a medical-imaging center.
The project was 100 percent leased and built out within one year of completion.
7878 N. 16th Street, Suite 270
* Phoenix, AZ 85020
Phone: (602) 943-8424 Fax: (602) 943-7931