FINALIST – 2021 Healthcare Design Showcase

CallisonRTKL worked with Evangelical Community Hospital (ECH) in Lewisburg, Pa., to revitalize the existing community hospital with a new landmark bed tower. Through the Patient Room Improvement, Modernization and Enhancement (PRIME) project, we created a modernized space that defines wayfinding with natural light through a series of courtyards and openings to guide the user through the new tower to the existing hospital.

The ECH PRIME tower represented an opportunity to modernize the facility and bring the community back to the hospital with a refreshed brand and patient experience. The goal was to seamlessly tie the new tower into the existing facility, provide access to expanded patient services, and build upon the community’s longstanding relationship with the hospital. The new tower touches the existing hospital at two locations to tie to existing circulation, while the remaining footprint is held away to create courtyards along the main promenade.

The narrow floorplate lets light penetrate deeper into the patient floors to reach the clinical support core to connect staff with the exterior. Light, neutral, and reflective colors were chosen to bring light deeper into the core support areas of the floor and increase ambient daylighting. Wood was introduced to compliment views to the landscaped courtyards at the large expanses of glazing along the ground floor promenade and public amenities spaces. Black steel detailing throughout the facility references the central Pennsylvania context and is used at visitor wayfinding points. Color is introduced through furniture selections and large custom wall graphics along the promenade and on patient floors and treatment spaces. The ground floor graphics are unique artist renditions of local landscapes commissioned specifically for the project. The graphics on the patient floors were chosen by the nurses serving the unit and provide each department with a unique identity.

Within the new building, views of the existing campus were carefully selected to maintain a frame of reference familiar to the community. Movement through the new space is choreographed and enhanced through strategically placed openings and landscaped courtyards to experientially blend the old and new.

To provide future resiliency, convertible negative pressure rooms were added adjacent to isolation rooms during construction. This created several blocks of rooms that could be activated as demand increased under emergency surge conditions. The lobby and conference center are also designed to be flexible, used to host community events focused on population health and wellness. The adaptive design serves a very important function now as the mass vaccination site for the community.

Project category: New construction

Chief administrator: Kendra A. Aucker, president and CEO, Evangelical Community Hospital

Firm: CallisonRTKL, www.callisonrtkl.com

Design team: CallisonRTKL (architecture, medical planning, interior design, medical equipment planning, construction administration)

Total building area (sq. ft.): 130,000

Construction cost/sq. ft.: $427 (new); $300 (renovation)

Total construction cost (excluding land): $51.2 million (new); $3.6 million (renovation)

Completed: September 2020