Back to Portfolio

Veterans Healthcare Medical Center

Healthcare: Healthcare

The exterior architecture employs a number of strategies that build upon our nation’s tradition of great civic architecture: enduring materials, gracious canopies and overhangs, and a vertical orientation of the facades.
What we did

Photography

Photos: Neil Alexander

What We Did

The SLVHCS Replacement Medical Center Project will create an environment that honors veterans and their families. As a model for healthcare of the future, it will set the standards for patient-centered care, flexibility, and sustainability. The new campus will respect our neighborhoods, authentically reflect the culture of the region and be the cornerstone for the emerging bioscience industry in New Orleans.

The exterior architecture employs a number of strategies that build upon our nation’s tradition of great civic architecture: enduring materials, gracious canopies and overhangs, and a vertical orientation of the facades. These and other attributes, when deployed at the scale of the project, position it as one of the most prominent works of civic architecture in the region. As a result the buildings become more than a hospital – they become a living monument to the Veterans they serve.

Courtyards and gardens are interwoven throughout the facility allowing 33% of the program spaces to be within fifteen feet of a day-lit exterior wall and providing access and abundant views to the landscape outside. The campus courtyards are designed for a range of experiences from open and communal to private and introspective.

Transitional Living & Rehabilitative Building - Veterans Healthcare Medical Center

The transitional living component of the TLRMP building is a hybrid of clinical care and community living. The design strategies blend the clinical palette developed throughout campus and a more residential tone that encourages comfort, healing and a sense of belonging. Transitional living engages with the other departments of the building and campus at large through the main street component of facilities on the first floor as well as with third floor roof gardens that overlook the Banks Street corridor.

On the second and third floor patient rooms are grouped into pods of ten beds that function as individual houses with distinct community living areas and also easily accessed care giver and support spaces. Each pod has a “front porch” presence along the central corridor. That is identifiable and serves the dual purpose of a front door entry as well as a place for family members to find a moment of respite from the clinical process. Courtyards flank the corridor to provide abundant natural light and views to the sky, perceptually opening up the interior to the outside. These same courtyards for the light filled center of each pod providing direct access to exterior spaces.