Design concept and solution: To strike a reassuring note for patients in distress, the architects wanted the building to project strength on the exterior and tranquillity inside. Since they were joining emergency and urgent care under one roof, they sought to balance openness with privacy; they wanted to keep the emergency patients separate from those seeking care for routine ailments, but without walling off parts of the program. Using load-bearing wood construction and wood trusses in much of the brick-clad structure, the architects opted for steel columns for the lobby and waiting area, where they needed the largest open spaces. To separate the emergency and urgent care departments, they used the nurses' station as a divider and sent the patient traffic on separate courses: two urgent-care corridors run east to west, parallel to each other, whereas the emergency-care corridor runs north-south, at the rear of the building. The urgent-care hallways are dotted with skylights, and no place in the building lacks a view to a window or the sky. To contrast with the no-nonsense brick exterior—which is capped with a sharp-angled zinc-clad roof plane—the architects chose interior finishes for their friendliness. Diamond-polished integral-color concrete floors further lighten the indoors by reflecting daylight, and translucent resin panels in shades of green brighten the main spaces, from reception and triage to the laboratory and nurses' station.

Total construction cost: $1.2 million