The project pays careful attention to a variety of potentially conflicting issues and priorities to create a project that the entire community can enjoy.
The project highlights the dual role that a healthcare organization can provide to a community, both emphasizing efforts to protect and develop better health to the population, and offering restorative health services to those who are not well.
The project clearly described their planning process, which included myriad social stakeholders. This resulted in clear and intuitive planning, which was also graphically described clearly.
A design that responds well to the community through program, access and thoughtful site design. The integration of light, local art and color makes this a very welcoming and comfortable environment in what can be stressful for some.
Wow, the Eskenazi Health Thomas and Arlene Grande Campus submission was truly impressive! It was exceptionally well-organized, presenting a clear and compelling narrative from its core mission and design concept through to its remarkable one-year statistics. I was particularly struck by the seamless integration of community spaces, which I believe significantly elevates the entire neighborhood. This project truly represents excellent work in healthcare design.
Citation Award – New Construction (Construction cost greater than $5-$25 million)
The project uses a variety of scales to emphasize community and belonging to a resident patient population during a time of personal vulnerability and insecurity during their treatment.
The project respects the vernacular of the community and creates a pastoral treatment campus with an identity and style both familiar and important to the residents.
The project challenged prototypical approaches to sleeping, personal care, and social spaces.
The home-like design gives the occupants a more comfortable less clinical feeling to help in their treatment.
The Compass Rose Academy was one of my favorite submissions. I loved the residential “home away from home” feel this behavioral health treatment center achieved. The design beautifully integrates with its rural Indiana agricultural landscape, fostering a healing environment that allows teens to reflect and engage with their therapeutic process. The thoughtful campus layout, including “The Hub” as a centralized care and learning space, provides a crucial personal sense of security while promoting community. The peaceful aesthetic of the modern farmhouse buildings, nestled within native prairie grasses, seamlessly blends with the landscape, underscoring the project’s commitment to character, stability, and service. What great spaces for the residents!
Citation Award – New Construction (Construction cost greater than $5-$25 million)
The project is masterful in its use of multiple entries to create internal circulation patterns that are clear, simple, and efficient.
The project reflects a simple box layout, marvelously punctuated with thoughtfully placed architectural accents, patterns, and interruptions that create visual interest and delight.
The project included several references to research and its application. It also clearly addressed most of the components of the Framework for Design Excellence. Achieving 2 GreenGlobes by mostly renovation is remarkable.
This new building stands out in its clarity and efficiency in planning allowing branding and use of color in design to pop.
The Ortho Indy Brownsburg ASC and MOB was thoughtfully designed to promote healing and recovery for patients and their families, while providing patient-centered orthopedic care through strategic accessibility, optimized workflows, and a modern architectural expression.
Citation Award – New Construction (Construction cost less than $5 million)
The project is architecturally clean and well done with a modest budget, delivering a facility scale that is appropriate for the site and context.
The project beautifully respects the local community character, both in its selection of materials and finishes, and by openly acknowledging its Amish population with the special accommodation of horse and buggy parking.
Social connectedness is typically contemporary, except when it extends to actively accommodating rare historical transportation, like parking provisions for a horse and buggy. This very small project reflected the character of its rural social culture.
Amidst the rural context rises a welcoming yet modest healthcare clinic that responds to the community needs and population. The warm home-like materials are well balanced with the more modern metal and glass elements sometimes seen in healthcare design which can reduce the stresses that a patient may experience.
Rush Memorial Hospital’s Milroy Clinic is a thoughtful design, significantly expanding healthcare access for underserved rural Indiana communities. I was impressed by its progressive yet grounded approach, offering a comforting and efficient environment. The inclusion of horse and buggy parking truly showcases the design’s profound respect and appropriateness for the local Amish community. Blending rustic-modern aesthetics with warm materials and natural light, this project expertly balances functionality and regional familiarity. It stands as a testament to thoughtful, community-focused healthcare architecture.
Citation Award – Adaptive Reuse / Renovation / Interior Architecture
The project unapologetically paid homage to its suburban mall heritage but also repurposed the retail spaces into clearly planned clinical pods.
A clever use of an existing structure to meet the programmatic needs making it a very sustainable approach in its basic concept for adaptive reuse. The strategic placement of program with skylights, the central circulation space for reception and waiting, along with the tasteful upgrade to the main entry brings a new meaning a “health mall.”
The project is refreshing in that it doesn’t pretend to be something that it isn’t. It is a repurposed mall. Beautifully done. Nice, clear, honest architecture.
The project sucks patients into a familiar and comfortable place, where reminders are everywhere of its former use, daring the visitor to “remember the old days” when this area was fast food, that area was a shoe store, and over here is where we used to gather after the football games.
Honor Award – Adaptive Reuse / Renovation / Interior Architecture
Project Architect
BSA
Project Name
Riley Maternity Tower at Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health
The project is a masterpiece of architectural, engineering, and operational coordination. The care and attention paid to the customization of the air handling and other utility systems, and its continuous operation during the renovation, are praiseworthy.
The project telegraphs thoughtful design at every turn. Everywhere the patient, staff, or visitor looks, the environment seems intentional, deliberate, and purposeful. The message is simple: Details matter, and we pay attention to the details, both in our buildings, and in our healthcare.
The project holds its myriad forms and finishes together quite elegantly and boldly. Additionally, redeveloping the MEP infrastructure with custom units and addressing their logistics is also remarkable.
A sophisticated design that blends the old and the contemporary with a very good use of light, color and materiality. A well-executed design in both architecture and energy plant that elevates the healthcare environment well into the future.
The IUHealth Riley Maternity Tower project is an exceptional example of adaptive reuse. I was thoroughly impressed by how seamlessly the old was transformed into the new, allowing for the integration of labor and delivery, a Level 3 NICU, and a postpartum unit all within one facility, addressing previous separation of mothers and high-risk newborns. The soothing color palette beautifully complements the updated spaces, and the “geode and crystal” design concept is not only evident throughout but expertly integrated, even in subtle details like the cubbies. This project is truly commendable and a significant asset to the community.
Merit Award – Healthcare Planning / Applied Research
The project advocates for two important truths: First, research can improve design, and second, the earlier research is deployed in the design process, the greater its beneficial impact can be.
This project’s use of data and research to make positive adjustments in planning and design is a good example of form following function. This project can be an inspiration to many other projects where efficiency of operations and planning is key in healthcare architecture.
The project fully availed itself to operational improvements like reducing wait times from 6x-30x, AND purposefully described the underlying research methods to replicate results.
The Columbus Regional Nexus Park submission for Healthcare Planning / Applied Research was a true standout. I was particularly impressed—even geeked out—by the use of the Discrete Event Simulation work used. The innovative adaptation of a shopping mall for the clinic space is nothing short of brilliant, offering a compelling vision for the future reuse of such “big box” structures in healthcare. The depth of research evident in this submission was thoroughly engaging, and I would be thrilled to see this project showcased at a professional conference. This is truly exceptional work.
The project team wisely noted that a significant dimension of their effectiveness in using simulation to improve design was their successful use of stakeholder perspectives and priorities to interpret and refine the simulations.
