Department of Veterans Affairs Long Beach Healthcare System Blind Rehabilitation Center, Outpatient Clinic, and Educational Resource Center [Long Beach, CA]
Project category: Project in progress (2010)
Chief administrator: Ronald Norby, Director, (562) 826-5400
Firm: Lee, Burkhart, Liu, (310) 829-2249
Design team: Erich Burkhart, AIA, Principal; Scott Mackey, Project Manager; Sina Yerushalmi, AIA, Senior Designer; Marco Giordano, AIA, Project Architect; Suzanne Jaggers, Medical Planner
Total building area (sq. ft.): 209,000
Construction cost/sq. ft.: $526
Total construction cost (excluding land): $110,000,000
Currently in design for the Department of Veterans Affairs Long Beach Healthcare System campus is an expansion to include three new buildings: a 24-bed Inpatient/Outpatient Blind Rehabilitation Center, an Outpatient Clinic building, and an Educational Resource Center.
In addition to these buildings, a new secure Hospital Main Lobby and architecturally unifying, indoor and outdoor connecting corridors that provide linkage to the existing campus buildings will be provided. The project is scheduled for completion in 2010.
The existing Medical Center campus is large and contains many disparate buildings of various scales, vintages, and architectural styles. This project attempts to unify these diverse buildings by creating a new “wave” roof structure for the public elements of each new building and a corresponding “wave” roof system for the new interior and exterior connecting corridors. These new roof systems will provide much-needed wayfinding clarity and identification of major new entrances and public destinations such as the Cafeteria and Auditorium.
The project’s programmatic innovations include nimble universal clinic modules in the Outpatient Center; a career and recruitment center in the Educational Resource facility; and a cutting-edge, prototypical Blind Rehabilitation program that includes diagnostic and evaluation services, residential facilities, training apartments, manual-skills facilities, and a variety of mobility and orientation training sites. This facility will be the first purpose-built Blind Rehabilitation Center in the national VA Medical Center system.
