The Lacks Cancer Center GRAND RAPIDS, MI
Project category: New construction (completed January 2005)
Chief administrator: James E. Miller, Vice-President of Major Construction, (616) 752-6623
Firm: Trinity Design, (248) 489-6440
Design team: Bob Miller, AIA, LEED AP, Project Manager; Dan Connelly, RA, Project Architect; William Bingham, RA, Design Architect; Marie Sinco, RA, Design Architect; Steve Stroman, LEED AP, Interior Designer (Trinity Design); Michael DeHart, PE, M/E Engineer (Wolf Wineman)
Photography: Stevens Advertising; Trinity Design; Brian Kelly Photography
Total building area (sq. ft.): 172,000
Construction cost/sq. ft.: $186
Total construction cost (excluding land): $32,000,000
The Lacks Cancer Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is the realization of a shared vision of Saint Mary’s Health Care and a generous donor community. The three main goals for the project were to convey a unique identity and connect to the community; commit to environmentally conscious design; and create a healing environment that supports leading-edge medicine and exceptional care for mind, body, and spirit.
This dynamic, 172,000-sq.-ft. facility is the only comprehensive cancer center in West Michigan and provides primary, ancillary, spiritual, and complementary care under one roof. It contains the most current radiation therapy, 42 private patient rooms and space for 42 additional rooms, family hospitality areas, treatment spaces, surgical suites, outpatient services, a rooftop garden, a labyrinth, water features, a chapel, and a library.
The center received LEED certification in January 2006. It is the second hospital and only the third healthcare facility in the nation to receive this distinction.
The center is located on an urban site. Its architecture conveys a warm and welcoming identity that inspires confidence and a view to the future. Sun-filled interiors focus on a contemporary hospitality aesthetic and reflect the essential concepts of a healing environment: family support, connections to nature, engaging the senses, stress reduction, and patient privacy, dignity, independence, and control.
Innovative care features include built-in oxygen outlets that allow patients to leave their beds; wireless bedside charting; and a full kitchen on the patient floor that offers a food-on-demand program that prepares meals any time of the day or night.