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When children get sick it’s a scary experience for the entire family, according to Liz Chaney, the capital projects director for the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.
So the proposed addition to the hospital – a 521,000-square-foot building that would double the hospital’s size on the Stanford University campus – is designed to comfort young patients and their relatives, she told Palo Alto’s Architectural Review Board (ARB) last Thursday.
Architects unveiled preliminary concepts for the ARB in a study session, and will return with more refined and formal plans in a few weeks.
But an underlying concept in the design is that families will embark “healing journey” through the structure, design architect Jill Lerner of New York’s Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates said.
Visitors will enter the new building through an open area dubbed the “explorer’s pavilion,” travel through curving, window-lined patient wings, and perhaps relax in the “healing garden” at the structure’s heart, Lerner explained.
She and Chaney presented the “healing journey” concept to the board – minus absent member David Solnick – in a study session aimed at gathering initial feedback.
The planned F-shaped building will rise 82 feet above Welch Road. It will be sandstone-colored to complement the current hospital and it will be ringed with greenery, Lerner said.
It will add 104 beds – increasing the total from 257 to 361 – and will convert many shared rooms to private rooms, a benefit to patients and families, according to the hospital representatives.
As part of the emphasis on creating a safe, welcoming space, little gardens nestled throughout the new building will create sanctuaries for families to have private, healing moments close to treatment areas and hospital rooms, Lerner said.
The courtyards and garden will mimic the current hospital’s emphasis on green spaces, she added.
The sometimes acerbic review board found little to dislike in the design.
“I’m a real skeptic on this subject here, [but] I’m really encouraged,” board member Judith Wasserman said, adding that she is “thrilled” architects had put so much thought into reassuring patients.
“You want it to say, ‘You’re going to get better, guys! … Things are not so bad here,'” she said.
Chair Clare Malone Prichard confirmed afterwards that the session went well for the children’s hospital.
“They’ve got a very imaginative design going on, and it’s very sensitive to … the current needs in pediatric care,” she said.
In one of its few concerns, the board wondered whether the two structures could match a bit more.
The old building is a collection of cube-like shapes, while the new building is dominated by sweeping curves, Wasserman pointed out.
Yet medical staff specifically asked architects to eschew rectilinear lines in favor of organic, rounded shapes, Lerner said. The latter spaces are more pleasant, she recalled them saying.
Board member Alexander Lew acknowledged that adding to the 1990s-era building in a visually congruent way is a challenge.
“When the hospital was built, I thought it would be hard to add to. It never occurred to me the day would be so soon,” he said.
The board also asked for a sign, landscaping or other symbol to announce the hospital’s presence where Welch Road meets Quarry Road, the main route to El Camino Real.
The current hospital is hard to find, board member Grace Lee said.
“I have been asked where Packard [hospital] is,” she said. “It’s hidden and people need to get there quickly.”
The next step for hospital architects is to present a more complete plan to the board for a formal preliminary review.
The children’s hospital addition is part of a major expansion of the Stanford University Medical center – which also includes the Stanford Hospital and Clinics and the university’s medical school – that would add 1.3 million square feet in the next 20 years.
If plans go forward as presented, the current 275,000-square-foot children’s hospital, completed in 1991, will nearly double in size.
Clinics at 701 and 703 Welch Road will be ripped down to build the new structure.
(Weekly Staff Writer Arden Pennell can be e-mailed at apennell@paweekly.com.)
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Flowing curves contrast with the existing squared-off architecture of the Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford. Rendering courtesy of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, the architectural firm doing the design. -
A preliminary-design concept of a facade if the proposed new Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford contrasts with the existing rectangular architecture of the hospital. Rendering courtesy of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, the architectural firm doing the design.
