Archinect - News

SmithGroup files suit over copyright violations for Michigan hospital design

2024-03-19T18:24:00-04:00

An argument concerning a new pediatric hospital design in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has spurred a lawsuit from SmithGroup against the local firm Pure Architects over an alleged violation of the copyright of an earlier unrealized project. Crain’s business journal is reporting on the disputed Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital project after SmithGroup filed a suit in federal court last week.

In the suit, SmithGroup alleges that the termination of their contract for the new Joan Secchia Children’s Rehabilitation Hospital never resulted in the required payment of licensing and other fees on the part of the hospital. They say that, in the aftermath, the hospital “improperly copied, reproduced, prepared derivative works” before sharing the plans with other architects, “willfully” infringing the copyright to generate new renderings.

Both the firm and the hospital are denying these claims publically. The $60 million project is expected to get underway this spring and be completed in 2026...

Studio Libeskind completes new Maggie's Centre design in London

2024-02-05T18:57:00-05:00

Studio Libeskind has completed work on its design for a new Maggie’s Centre cancer treatment facility at the Royal Free Hospital in north London.

The 4,886-square-foot design follows well-known contributions from Foster + Partners, Steven Holl, and Heatherwick Studio as an example of its client’s mission to provide patients with world-class settings in which to receive their care. The project is now the 24th Maggie’s Centre completed in the UK since 1996.

Photo: Hufton + Crow

The studio says its design is arranged for the free-flowing movement of patients and their caretakers while giving equal consideration to the needs for both privacy and socialization.

Photo: Hufton + Crow

In terms of building form, the Centre is curvilinear in contrast with the surrounding brick-and-mortar buildings on the NHS campus. The design was realized on a small plot that was once a parking lot. As such, its volume expands upwards from the ground floor clad in weathered timber panels and sheathed in glaz...

Foster + Partners and CannonDesign lead reimagination of Mayo Clinic campus in Minnesota

2023-11-30T11:53:00-05:00

A team comprising Foster + Partners, CannonDesign, and Gilbane Building Company has designed a major healthcare addition to Mayo Clinic’s campus in Rochester, Minnesota. The project, titled 'Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester' features two new high-rise clinical buildings at the center of the campus.

The new buildings measure nine stories to reach a height of 221 feet, with the potential to expand to 420 feet over time. A new central point of arrival is created by the buildings, with north and south drop-offs converging at a unified main entrance.

Above the central arrival point, a sky bridge horizontally links the two new buildings with the existing Gonda Building to improve wayfinding and circulation. The sky bridge is also part of a double-height ‘social ame...

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Tokyo Imperial Hotel prepares for major expansion

2023-09-28T08:00:00-04:00

Paris-based Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects (ATTA) is moving forward with its plans for a major expansion of Frank Lloyd Wright's beloved Imperial Hotel in Tokyo following their selection as the project’s winning design architect in November of 2021.

The project will be the fourth such major overhaul of Yuzuru Watanabe’s original 1890 design and links Wright (who strove in his multiple renovations from 1923 onward to blend eastern and western motifs as much as possible) with the present-day and future development of architecture as a culture-bridging discipline.

Tane’s instincts for the project were based on his beliefs that the hotel should be returned to its late-1920s reputation as the “Jewel of the Orient,” a source of national pride, and an important cultural exchange. His team says they will utilize a “unique archaeological approach” that considers the many layers of history and typology present at the site while in the process of realizing their design for the new Main Buil...

3XN shares new Copenhagen Children's Hospital images ahead of 2026 opening

2023-08-16T13:57:00-04:00

3XN has shared photos of their nearly complete Copenhagen Children’s Hospital project in the Danish capital.

Spanning 58,000 square meters (about 624,300 square feet), the design will yield a total of 219 beds for children, teens, and pregnant women, 15 operating rooms, 57 ambulatory care suites for children and adolescents, another 30 for adults, 14 delivery rooms, and a nuclear diagnostics center.

Once it opens early next year, the hospital will have a capacity for 900 persons in addition to 1,200 staff. The firm says its design is meant to harness the power of play as a palliative measure and will be completed at a cost of $350 million for its client, the Capital Region of Denmark.

Image: 3XN

Formed by two asterisk-shaped volumes meant to evoke the image of a pair of widespread hands connected together at the wrist plate, the bays inside the individual "fingers" in the design are bookended by winter gardens at the tips and share a central core reserved for family lounge...

Jacques Herzog previews the Royal Academy exhibition with Christopher Hawthorne

2023-07-11T13:42:00-04:00

Actually, the reason we curate the shows ourselves is not because we want to control how people think, but quite the opposite. I don’t want to be too defensive. I’m not a moralist. If I would to try to control everything, I would have chosen the wrong job.

Back in May, Hawthorne met with Jacques Herzog at the opening of the Venice Biennale to discuss the upcoming exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London as well as several prevailing industry trends that have impacted his firm’s size and projects in the United States and abroad. He says that, among other project types, “neglected” hospital design offers architects the most potential. The 73-year-old Herzog then offers some insights into the firm’s reluctance to work in Russia after last year, the limits of adaptive reuse, curation, and the perception of his counterpart's role as a firm leader vis-à-vis his own.

Previously on Archinect: Herzog & de Meuron’s first London exhibition in 20 years to be hosted by the Royal Academy of Arts

“Pierre has always organized the business, going back to when we were starting out. But it’s not fair to say that Pierre is the business guy and I’m the artist,” he tells the former LA Times critic. “Ideally, we look into projects together and we di...

Payette founder Tom Payette has passed away aged 90

2022-11-18T14:29:00-05:00

A leading figure in the architecture industry is being mourned after Payette announced the passing of its founder Tom Payette last week at the age of 90.

Payette was considered an innovator in the design of healthcare facilities and scientific high-ed buildings, garnering a consistent stream of AIA national awards and the admiration of the hundreds of other practitioners he came to collaborate with on similar projects via the entity that became his eponymous firm.

“Tom was courageous, no challenge was unachievable, and no disappointment could phase him,” his colleague and current Payette President Kevin Sullivan remembered. “He encouraged us to do remarkable things, always looking forward, never dwelling on the past and always encouraging us to do great design, but most importantly, never allowing us to forget the importance of family and maintaining a life beyond architecture.”

Payette earned his b...

CannonDesign and Foster + Partners picked to design Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center expansion in NYC

2022-11-17T14:04:00-05:00

A joint team of CannonDesign and Foster + Partners has been selected to design a new high-rise pavilion for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan’s Midtown East neighborhood.

Design details are still being finalized, but the structure will stand a minimum of 30 stories in height and leverage Cannon’s expertise in modular construction techniques in order to deliver a “pioneering medical facility that will be at the forefront of innovation and patient care.” The project is said to help meet MSK’s “evolving cancer care needs over the next century” and add a more modern, 200-bed facility connected to the institution’s main building at the corner of E. 66th Street and York Avenue.

Foster + Partners explains: “The Pavilion will create incredible human experiences within and beyond the Pavilion walls for patients, their families, and staff. The building will help MSK attract and retain the very best cancer clinicians, researchers, and staff in the world.”

Related on Archinect...

J. MAYER H. unveils ZIPPER - RKM 740, a new hybrid healthcare-residential tower in Düsseldorf

2022-10-14T15:49:00-04:00

J. MAYER H. has shared photos of their new ZIPPER - RKM 740 Tower project in Düsseldorf. Overlooking the Rhine on the former campus of the Dominikus hospital, the new high-rise development includes residences and healthcare facilities inside a 22,000-square-meter (237,000-square-foot) structure whose synergy they say serves as a “prototype of a hospital for the future.”

Photo: David Franck

The facade’s perforated metal curtain provides the zipper reference through a series of gradual openings that can be flexibly adapted. The arrangement of the facade also works to provide shade and wind protection to the structure, whose program is split into two 6- and 14-story volumes defining both the medical functions and housing component, respectively.

Photo: David Franck

Per the architects: “The dynamic, organic shapes of the building rise like clouds of mist towards a thin volume at the top. It seems to grow in horiz...

'Beauty matters': MASS Design Group featured on 60 Minutes

2022-09-07T13:13:00-04:00

Lesley Stahl: Do you think that COVID will change architecture for everybody? Michael Murphy: Everyone around the world is going through a shift in their understanding of the buildings around us. That they may make us sicker, that they could make us healthier if they were better designed.

MASS founding principal and executive director Michael Murphy discussed the curative father-son restoration project that led to his enrollment at Harvard and subsequent experience with the firm’s award-winning early Butaro District Hospital project in Rwanda, which helped cement the place of air flow as one of its three simple design mandates long before the impacts of COVID-19 were noted across the industry.

Murphy's desire to give back to his hometown of Poughkeepsie through various retrofit projects is also highlighted along with a site visit to the in-progress Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture campus, which comes well-appointed with furnishings created by Managing Director Christian Benimana's MASS.Made studio in Kigali. “Beauty matters,” Murphy told 60 Minutes host Lesley Stahl finally about the approach that led to last year's AIA Firm Award win. “Spaces...

Renzo Piano’s trio of new hospitals in Greece will stand as 'modern design templates' in a changing world

2022-08-08T16:40:00-04:00

$750 million will bring a trio of much-needed modern hospital designs to Greece by way of Renzo Piano. This set of hospital projects is in collaboration with Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Health Initiative, which aims to deliver new hospital infrastructure and public healthcare in Greece. Elianna Konialis, lead of the SNF Health Initiative, shared with Nate Berg of FastCompany that the goal of these hospitals is to “improve access and quality of care in regions that are underserved.”

The city of Greece is a decade removed from the country’s plunge into economic and social calamity over public debts that have now rendered much of the healthcare system outside of Athens either inadequate or obsolete.

Ariel view of SNF University Pediatric Hospital of Thessaloniki. Image render courtesy Renzo Piano Building Workshop.

The Pritzker-winning architect and his firm have been tasked with the design and delivery of new facilities in Thessaloniki, Komotini, and Sparta. The hospital in Thes...

OMA and Buro Happold reveal new video of modular hospital prototype

2022-04-12T09:00:00-04:00

One of the most promising recent healthcare infrastructure concepts has engendered an offshoot project that looks to expand on its original framework design.

As a product of the research done for their collaboration on the Al Daayan Health District Master Plan in Doha, OMA and Buro Happold have created a prototype for a low-rise hospital structure commissioned by the Hamad Medical Corporation.

Previously on Archinect: OMA and Buro Happold reveal designs for the Al Daayan Health District in Doha

Image © HMC

The prototype appears to consist of similar two-story-high modular units that can be adapted and reconfigured to allow for maximal variation and minimal costs. Scalable, self-sufficient, and built using a considerable amount of 3D printing technology, the design is a sustainable refresh to the important typology and hopes to see further use in other climates once the Qatari concept catches on.

Image © HMC

“Medical technology is advancing exponentially, leaving hospitals to...

MASS Design's Michael Murphy says we're failing to learn the epidemic design lessons Florence Nightingale provided 150 years ago

2021-12-29T16:39:00-05:00

At our peril, we have ignored Nightingale’s prescriptions. The history of the hospital contains clear lessons about the importance of air movement through buildings, the public health risks of poor design, and the dangers of technological reliance. Architecture professionals should look back to see what else has been forgotten or ignored in the race to merge art and technology. Whose lives might be at stake if they don’t?

Murphy is a principal at Boston-based MASS Design Group and the author of The Architecture of Health: Hospital Design and the Construction of Dignity, which accompanies the firm’s recent exhibition Design and Healing: Creative Responses to Epidemics on view at the Cooper Hewitt until February 23rd.

In it, Murphy argues that the COVID pandemic has affected a new paradigm in the ways architects and healthcare designers think about hospitals that are reliant on air, either cooled or circulated by mechanical systems, and failed in their attempts to mitigate the virus’ spread by fenestration that is now an impediment to the application of effective inpatient treatment.

Interior of MASS Design Group's Butaro Hospital in Ruhengeri, Rwanda. Photo: Iwan Baan.

“Like all crises that reveal cracks in the system, the pandemic has prompted a public reckoning with the role of buildings in shaping our health. Recent reporting is waking up to the crisis of breathability in buildings, raising questi...

A ‘hospital of the future’: Foster + Partners opens new medical school building at UPenn

2021-11-19T09:00:00-05:00

With the spiritual and material well-being of its next-generation patients in mind, the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine has opened an inpatient facility from Foster + Partners and others that is being heralded as a “hospital of the future.”

Located on Penn’s historic West Philadelphia campus, The Pavillion is the university’s answer to the growing body of scholarship that supports a patient-oriented approach to care that is embodied in its design and functionality.

“The new Pavilion is designed to completely redefine the future of healthcare,” Norman Foster said. “The building enables innovations that reflect University of Pennsylvania’s history of medical firsts, creating a truly flexible facility that molds itself to the needs of the patient. Responsive, adaptable and future-proof, it will allow the hospital to continue its crucial life-saving work and remain at the cutting edge of patient care.”

The University indeed h...

OMA and Buro Happold reveal designs for the Al Daayan Health District in Doha

2021-10-18T14:50:00-04:00

Final drafts for the joint OMA and Buro Happold-designed Al Daayan Health District are now available, showcasing a localized model of healthcare infrastructure that OMA Partner Reinier de Graaf hopes will be transplanted from Doha, Qatar to the rest of the world.

Image © OMA

The 1.3-million-square-meter (14-million-square-foot) facility will be completely self-sustaining thanks to onsite prefabrication, 3D printing, an agricultural element, and built-in solar farm.

Image © OMA

“Architects have long aimed to provide the hospital with a final solution. This proposal starts from the opposite end: viewing the hospital as the type of building that is forever under construction, as an organism for which space and time must be considered equally,” de Graaf said in a statement.

Image © OMA

The development is anchored by a two-story building that houses a teaching hospital, women’s and children’s hospitals, ambulatory care, and clinical facilities. The new hospital will have capacity for 1,400...

Foster + Partners begins construction on new cardiac hospital complex in Egypt

2020-09-11T13:26:00-04:00

International architecture firm Foster + Partners has begun construction on the Magdi Yacoub Global Heart Centre Cairo, a new 300-bed hospital that aims to provide free state-of-the-art treatment for local and international patients.

The hospital was founded by a surgeon named Sir Magdi Yacoub who has outlined a vision for offering free vital health services for low and middle-income people across Africa. An announcement describing the project explains, "The design of the 300-bed hospital responds to the needs of patients, their families and the staff that care for them, and is set within a lush, verdant landscape and a calming lake that seeks to optimize the overall patient experience and decrease recovery times."

The project is arranged as as series of medical buildings surrounded by greenery, with the buildings themselves articulated with serial window bays facing a view that includes the Great Pyramids of Giza. The ground floor of the project includes diagnosis and treatment ar...

Arup uses cloud computing to drastically cut structural design time for massive Istanbul hospital

2020-06-04T18:44:00-04:00

A recently inaugurated 1 million-square-meter hospital complex designed by Arup, Perkins and Will, and Yazgan Design Architecture for Rönesans Holding and Sojitz Corporation in Istanbul, Turkey is a feat of engineering and design coordination.

The building contains many interior courtyards that connect different wings and buildings together.

The massive Başakşehir Pine and Sakura City Hospital complex consists of three nearly identical hospital towers containing a main hospital facility, a psychiatric hospital, and a physical treatment and rehabilitation facility. The 2,682-bed hospital, developed as a public-private partnership, also includes six clinic buildings and five auxiliary facility buildings situated on the site.

While the massing, articulation, and materiality of the complex are relatively staid and straightforward, its what lies underneath these elements that truly defines the complex.

Overall view of the hospital complex.

For example, the hospital sits on 2,068 seismi...

MASS Design Group brings pandemic design expertise to American hospital wards

2020-04-30T16:17:00-04:00

In the mad rush to accommodate the surge of COVID-19 patients in New York City that started in March, the city's Mount Sinai hospital looked to MASS Design Group to help it understand how its built environment could be influencing contagion control, and to gather additional knowledge that could be shared with other hospitals facing a surge in COVID-19 patients .

MASS Design Group has extensive experience working within the pandemic setting, as the group's work in Haiti, East Africa, and other international locales battling infectious disease outbreaks demonstrates. In a recent article published by The Boston Globe, Michael Murphy, founding principal and executive director of MASS Design Group, outlines design approaches focused on the potential spaces have to transmit (or prevent transmission) of deadly particles via "air, surfaces, and water."

MASS Design Group partnered with Ariadne Labs, a healthcare innovation consultancy founded by Atul Gawande, to publish an online PDF title...

Archinect - News

SmithGroup files suit over copyright violations for Michigan hospital design

Studio Libeskind completes new Maggie's Centre design in London

Foster + Partners and CannonDesign lead reimagination of Mayo Clinic campus in Minnesota

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Tokyo Imperial Hotel prepares for major expansion

3XN shares new Copenhagen Children's Hospital images ahead of 2026 opening

Jacques Herzog previews the Royal Academy exhibition with Christopher Hawthorne

Payette founder Tom Payette has passed away aged 90

CannonDesign and Foster + Partners picked to design Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center expansion in NYC

J. MAYER H. unveils ​ZIPPER - RKM 740, a new hybrid healthcare-residential tower in Düsseldorf

'Beauty matters': MASS Design Group featured on 60 Minutes

​Renzo Piano’s trio of new hospitals in Greece will stand as 'modern design templates' in a changing world

OMA and Buro Happold reveal new video of modular hospital prototype

MASS Design's Michael Murphy says we're failing to learn the epidemic design lessons Florence Nightingale provided 150 years ago

A ‘hospital of the future’: Foster + Partners opens new medical school building at UPenn

OMA and Buro Happold reveal designs for the Al Daayan Health District in Doha

Foster + Partners begins construction on new cardiac hospital complex in Egypt

Arup uses cloud computing to drastically cut structural design time for massive Istanbul hospital

MASS Design Group brings pandemic design expertise to American hospital wards

J. MAYER H. unveils ZIPPER - RKM 740, a new hybrid healthcare-residential tower in Düsseldorf

Renzo Piano’s trio of new hospitals in Greece will stand as 'modern design templates' in a changing world