Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/178323
dmonton Clinic South is an eight-storey (plus penthouse), 677,000-square-foot facility designed and built to support a teambased approach to patient-centred clinical care. It is home to 90 clinics staffed by more than 2,000 health sciences professionals and has been devised to expedite a wide scope of outpatient services all in one location, right next to the University of Alberta Hospital. The facility, which began operations in July, transforms the delivery of outpatient care by offering patients onestop access to assessment, diagnosis and treatment. It brings together multidisciplinary teams of specialists under one roof, including surgical, medical, family and seniors' clinics, along with orthopaedic and neurosciences clinics. Such integration of services will deliver ambulatory care for up to one million patient visits per year. "What drives ambulatory care centres of this size are huge throughput volumes, an enormous amount of repetition and a huge degree of lexibility," says Tom Sutherland, managing principal with Dialog, architect and prime consultant on the project. The clinical needs change daily and even hour-byhour, and the team devised a large and lexible loor plate serviced ef iciently by the primary circulation systems. "It's crucial that those elements like an elevator bank not become impediments to the lexibility of how the clinic by Lawrence Herzog runs," Sutherland says. "So they were moved to the outside of the building's main chassis, and they play off the clinics that run rigorously provides a distinctive marker to the front of the university campus. top-to-bottom in the building." "In a building this massive, we wanted people to be able The dominant design feature is an eight-storey-high curved atrium, which runs the length of the eastern eleva- to come in the front door, go to the information desk, look up tion facing 114 Street. A horizontal mullion pattern was used into the atrium and see where they have to go," Sutherland on the curved curtain wall to reinforce the graceful arc of says. "We wanted patients on the loors to be able to look out the facade. The atrium is a primary orienting feature that through the atrium and orient themselves to the rest of the improves way inding, aids with natural light penetration and campus, and we wanted staff to be able to see outside as well." PHOTOS: TOM ARBAN / COURTESY DIALOG E Edmonton Clinic South Dialog's structural team, led by principals Jim Montgomery and Jeff DiBattista, were challenged to devise a support system for the atrium that wouldn't clutter up the glazing with heavy structure. "The glass wall is supported by columns that have tensioned stainless steel cables on them," DiBattista explains. "That allows the columns supporting the roof to be very slender and yet very light and elegant and transparent." With its Group D classi ication as an of ice building, there are no interstitial loors, and systems were routed through ceiling plenums. "We did everything we could to keep the cost of the building down," Sutherland says. "Where services were needed to meet health-care requirements, they were put in, but it was always within the context of an of ice-type building." The interior design focused on making the public spaces more welcoming and less institutional to help ease anxiety. "It was really important to develop a logical and intuitive way of understanding where you are in the building and how to get to the different spaces from the main circulation corridor," says Michelle Sigurdson, principal, interior design for Dialog. AUGUST 2012 p.50-53EdmontonClinicSouth.indd 51 /51 7/13/12 10:13 AM