Parker Performance Institute, Frisco, Texas: Photo Tour
Garrett Rowland
Parker Performance Institute: The design balances a tech-forward environment with human touches and warm materiality, such as the wood slats installed along the central pathway. Leveraging tall windows and mirrors, the design animates this public area with daylight, while customizable lighting in the clinical zone allows patients to control light levels during treatment.
Garrett Rowland
Parker Performance Institute: The performance zone conjures a sense of athleticism and vigor with dark metal accents, turf, and digital displays reminiscent of a sports facility. To make the elongated space feel open, the project team utilized mirrors, exposed structural components, and natural light to fill the space.
Garrett Rowland
Parker Performance Institute: The center’s two zones meet at a central circulation path, indicated by light-colored wood flooring.
Garrett Rowland
Parker Performance Institute: Specialized and innovative equipment is visible behind transparent planes of glazing. The minimalist aesthetic is designed to keep patients focused on the experience of healing.
Garrett Rowland
Parker Performance Institute: Designers strategically layered light throughout the facility, including cool blue and white tones and soft, indirect light in the healing zone to promote a sense of relaxation and wellness.
Garrett Rowland
Parker Performance Institute: In the exam and massage rooms, indirect and color-changing circadian lighting can be customized for patients to create a soothing retreat with optimal light quality for clinical evaluation.
Garrett Rowland
Parker Performance Institute: Athletic performance is on display at the institute with direct sight lines from the main lobby to the playing fields and strength-training areas. The center uses a primary material palette of concrete, glass, and metal to evoke principles of strength, durability, and precision.
Parker Performance Institute, Frisco, Texas
The Star, the 91-acre campus of the Dallas Cowboys World Headquarters and practice facility, is home to several specialized centers, including Baylor Scott & White Sports Therapy and Research.
In July 2023, the Frisco, Texas, development welcomed its newest player, The Parker Performance Institute, a sports and rehabilitation clinic inside the Baylor therapy and research facility, both designed by Perkins&Will (Dallas).
Owner Parker University, a private university focused on healthcare in Dallas, opened the Parker Performance Clinic to extend specialized care beyond its campus.
The approximately 9,000-square-foot clinic, housed on the seventh floor, extends specialized care beyond Parker University’s campus in Dallas, offering North Texans a high-tech environment for athletic performance and training, as well as treatment of neurological disorders, traumatic brain injury, and musculoskeletal disorders.
Multidisciplinary care for neurological, sports performance
The new institute houses specialized clinicians, chiropractic experts, and students who integrate neuroscience into physical rehabilitation, tailoring plans to diverse patients, including veterans, athletes on the path to recovery, and individuals seeking performance-enhancing healthcare.
To reflect the institute’s multifaceted approach to care, the project team created two distinct zones.
The first is the performance zone: an open, communal space with the energetic ambiance of a training gym for sports physicals, return-to-sport programs, athlete coordination enhancement (ACE), and functional movement baseline assessments. The second is the healing zone: a serene, more private, spa-like space for neurology and musculoskeletal treatments.
Contemporary design aesthetic
The elongated space has a simple, cool-neutral palette and sleek, contemporary look, conveying the high-end experience of care offered at the institute.
Visitors enter at the performance zone, where turf flooring, dark metal accents on the walls, and an exposed ceiling create an energized, modern gym aesthetic.
Natural light streaming in through tall windows and bouncing from mirrors invigorates the open training area.
A continuous ribbon of light on the ceiling identifies the central circulation spine, which serves as a threshold between the two zones.
This path is defined in part by a detailed feature wall with interchangeable shelving to display products including supplements to assist with body recovery and revitalization.
Organized zones for treatment and healing services
The healing zone comprises clean, bright pods of treatment rooms equipped with neurological and visual equipment used for light therapy, vertigo treatment, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
This area includes two massage rooms, seven chiropractic adjustment rooms, a consultation room, medical office space, and staff break room, as well as tools for advanced rehabilitation such as dynamic posturography, virtual reality, and 3D diagnostics.
With customizable color-changing circadian lighting, these rooms address individual patients’ needs in a welcoming, personalized environment, supporting both the physical and emotional facets of performance and recovery.
Parker Performance Institute project details
Location: Frisco, Texas
Completion date: July 2023
Owner: Parker University
Total building area: 9,200 sq. ft.
Total construction cost: Not disclosed
Cost/sq. ft.: Not disclosed
Architect: Perkins&Will
Interior designer: Perkins&Will
General contractor: Skiles Group
Engineer: Purdy-McGuire
Builder: Skiles Group
Medical equipment planner: Perkins&Will
Carpet/flooring: PDL Floor Designs, Rubber Flooring Systems
Ceiling/wall systems: Armstrong World Industries
Doors/locks/hardware: Dallas Door and Supply Co.
Handrails/wall guards: PDV Associates
Lighting: Architectural Lighting Alliance
Signage/wayfinding: Fastsigns
Surfaces—solid/other: Woodhaus
Wallcoverings: Designtex, Shahan and Sons
Other: Universal Glass Co.
Project details are provided by the design team and not vetted by Healthcare Design.
