SUNY Upstate Medical University Hospital – Upstate Cancer Center – Syracuse, NY
This new 97,000 GSF integrated inpatient and outpatient cancer center provides interdisciplinary, collaborative care within architecture inspired by the patient experience.
The center is located adjacent to the Upstate University Hospital; its three-story atrium forms a gateway entrance for the campus, providing an architectural identity, connecting major pedestrian and vehicular circulation routes, and bringing natural light indoors.
LEED Silver certification is anticipated for the building’s use of daylight, natural materials, and green roof that circumvents over 211,000 gallons of storm water from the local sewer system into a reservoir to serve a four-season healing garden.
Design challenges included a confined urban site with tight clearances to nearby buildings and the need to identify and architecturally reinforce the new cancer treatment service line while differentiating its entrance from the main entry to the hospital next door.
Our architects, interior designers, and engineers collaborated on a design guided by the following priorities:
• Transparency Natural light and views permeate much of the center. Patients have clear views of the roof garden and landscape elements, which offer both distraction and visual stimulation. Even within the radiation therapy area, we incorporated skylights between the concrete radiation vaults to bring natural light to typically confined and dark spaces.
• Color A palette of vibrant colors unifies the center’s different volumes and enlivens spaces during Syracuse’s traditionally cold and dreary winter months.
• Nuance Variations of spatial experience occur based on season, time of day, and each patient’s course of treatment. Daylight and color are accentuated by subtleties within the material choices and arrangement. For example, the frit pattern on curtain wall glass varies from reflective to transparent and wood-slat wall covering in the lobby seems to change in pattern and color based on how far away one stands.
• Control The design accommodates patient control over his or her environment. Within treatment areas, differing degrees of privacy and openness enable patients to seek comfort with a group or spend time alone.
According to EwingCole Director of Design Saul Jabbawy, the architecture of Upstate Cancer Center puts perspective on display.
“Each patient’s perspective on his or her treatment, relationships with other patients and staff, and emotional feelings will differ from day to day,” Jabbawy describes. “The design creates vignettes that relate to each other in much the same way, from a view of the rooftop garden to an opportunity to talk quietly with another patient. We hope to treat patients’ emotional needs with visual stimulation, clarity, and tranquility.”
