Project category: Addition (completed November 2006)

Chief administrator: Gary Furgeson, Chief Operating Officer, (302) 733-1000

Firm: Wilmot Sanz, Inc., (301) 590-2900

Design team: Craig Moskowitz, Principal-in-Charge; Dwight Fincher, Design Principal; Sheila Williams, Project Architect; Su Kim, Interior Designer (Wilmot Sanz, Inc.); Patrick Fugeman, Director; Janice McMillen, Project Manager (Christiana Care Health Services)

Photography: Su Kim, Wilmot Sanz, Inc. (exterior); Barry Halkin

Total building area (sq. ft.): 340,000

Construction cost/sq. ft.: $213

Total construction cost (excluding land): $72,400,000

The Christiana Hospital campus expansion creates an integrated cardiac and vascular Center of Excellence and provides additional beds needed through the end of this decade, while enhancing educational capabilities for staff and the community.

Attached to the existing hospital, the new tower addition is designed to provide a contextual fit into the current campus while expressing its individuality through its building geometry and contrasting mixture of masonry and curtainwall elements.

The new clinical care and education initiative for the Christiana Care Health System adds 30 short-stay beds and 172 private inpatient beds, which can flex to 204 beds at peak census. This project also expands Christiana Care’s cardiovascular program with an integrated suite of cardiac and vascular interventional rooms, and it establishes a state-of-the-art science education conference center.

The new patient tower houses a 26-bed CCICU, a 26-bed MICU, and two 30-bed med-surg floors with operational flexibility to flex to 38. A decentralized nursing concept is facilitated by three nurses’ stations at the corners of a triangular support core.

Each patient floor has a residentially scaled and appointed family waiting area, a patient dayroom, and areas where visitors can “touch down” and connect to the Internet for business or pleasure.

Throughout the building, a neutral background color palette of warm beiges and honey maple wood veneers and laminates softens the general appearance and adds to a nonclinical ambience. Spaces are articulated and brightened by the use of cross-coordinated accent colors on walls and ceilings, contemporary light fixtures, and colorful acrylic panels incorporated into maple-framed screen walls. Natural stone veneers emphasize walls in the main lobby, framing overlooks from the upper elevator lobby and donor-recognition areas. Serpentine

ceiling treatments add visual interest at the ceiling planes and reinforce the curvilinear circulation patterns.

The fully digital, networked medical library is combined with the reference collections of the Delaware Academy of Medicine to create an invaluable medical resource for physicians and staff.


The education conference center contains a large multipurpose space that seats 200 participants; it can be further subdivided into two smaller spaces, all with state-of-the-art audiovisual, multiscreen display capabilities. Thirteen additional training/classrooms are provided to augment the hospital’s educational initiatives.