Story

A good example of adaptive reuse, this project for St. Francis Hospital of Evanston involved the design of a new 30,000-square foot out-patient and cancer care center in an existing, thirty-year old building.  The existing building, which had previously housed a supermarket and department store, had to be converted into an attractive, multi-purpose ambulatory care medical facility to serve the surrounding community.  One of the major challenges facing the design team was to create a new kind of health center that would avoid the sterile feel typical of many medical facilities and thereby appeal to the young families in the neighborhood.  The design concept was based largely on the idea of bringing the “outside in” through the use of visual motifs, furniture, and color in order to create a nature-like setting throughout the space and thereby encourage calm and well-being.