Nearing the one-year anniversary of the opening of the Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital in Indianapolis, members of the design team took part in a roundtable discussion at this year’s Healthcare Design Conference in San Diego to share how new design features and operations were performing against expectations.
Project source list:
Completion date: December 2013
Owner: Health and Hospital Corp. of Marion County, parent company of Eskenazi Health
Total building area: 882,346 SF (hospital); 198,435 SF (ambulatory care building); 12,600 SF (central utility plant); 23,300 SF (central boiler plant); 300,000 SF (faculty office building)
Total construction cost: $593 million
Architecture: HOK (executive architect), Ratio, BSA LifeStructures, Blackburn Associates, A2S04, Synthesis, DSR
Interior design: HOK, Maregatti Interiors
Eskenazi Health employs a range of strategies at the Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital to connect to nature and encourage healthy lifestyles, from its calming interior that incorporates plentiful daylighting to the outdoor spaces that can be viewed from numerous locations on the campus. But it was during a planning meeting with one of the landscape architects when the project’s most profound concept was born: a rooftop farm.
Indianapolis’ public safety-net hospital has gone through multiple name changes—starting as City Hospital in 1859 and changing to Indianapolis General and Wishard Memorial before becoming Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital in 2013. But during all those years—and name changes—it’s held a strong commitment to artwork in the healing environment.
Public safety-net hospitals are used to focusing on the needs of their communities, bringing a range of services to a diverse patient population. However, five years ago, Wishard Memorial Hospital found itself turning to its Indianapolis community for help.
The Miriam Hospital, which has served the Providence, R.I., area since 1926, has experienced an increasing demand for its emergency department (ED) over the years. As patient visits grew, the nearly 20-year old department was becoming overcrowded and unable to accommodate medical and technical advances.
A renovation project was started in September 2012 and broken into five phases, which allowed the ED to remain operational during construction. It was completed in May 2014.
LEED, Cradle to Cradle, EPDs, and HPDs. The list of sustainability initiatives, design tools, and rating systems—as well as acronyms—continues to grow.
In 1859, City Hospital opened in Indianapolis first to treat small pox and then to serve as a military hospital. Over the next 155 years, as the facility evolved, added services, and changed names—from City Hospital to Indianapolis General Hospital in 1947 and Wishard Memorial Hospital in 1975—it didn’t always have the capital structure to incorporate new designs and technological advancements, instead opting to do small upgrades here and there.
