PUTTING PATIENTS AT THE CENTER
Fred Hutch Cancer Center, South Lake Union Clinic Building 2
Healthcare
Cancer diagnosis is a life-changing moment. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center’s new clinical building is designed to reduce the impact by providing hope and inspiration for patients and their loved ones—from treatment and recovery to life beyond cancer. As the largest clinical expansion in the center’s history, the project adds 150,000 square feet to the existing clinic, Building 1, designed by ZGF in the late 1990’s.
With universal treatment suites, the most advanced equipment, and a first-of-its-kind automated parking system, everything has been designed to put patients at the center. The latest breakthroughs in care delivery are integrated with moments of calm and respite, creating a holistic healing environment that considers the full range of emotions patients may experience in the space.
Location
Seattle, WA
Square Feet
150,000
Completion date
March 2023
Project Component
Architecture Services & Portfolio
Interior Design & Space Planning
Textured brick anchors the building’s energetic composition in familiar campus language.
The project creates a contemporary heart within the historic Fred Hutch campus, surrounded by office and lab buildings where groundbreaking scientific discoveries can be seamlessly integrated into patient care.
DESIGNED TO UPLIFT AND INSPIRE
The building exterior fits within the Fred Hutch campus context but is immediately recognizable to patients as the new clinic. Vertical window bays wrap the prominent corner as projecting volumes, announcing the building entrance and housing community spaces inside. The bays vary in size and projection to create a friendly, non-institutional façade for the building’s public face. Horizontally they reflect the internal program stack: imaging on the first two levels, and clinics and patient care on the upper three levels.
The building sets back on Aloha Street, yielding a richly planted sidewalk experience and exterior garden visible from the lobby. It maintains a formal and visual connection to the existing building behind it with breathing room in between.
Rooftop solar panels produce renewable energy onsite, reinforcing Fred Hutch’s commitment to environmental sensitivity and efficient use of resources.
“This new building represents the physical embodiment of our commitment to continue to advance cancer care for our patient community.”
- Dr. Thomas J. Lynch Jr., Fred Hutch President and Director
Patients arrive in a warm, welcoming new lobby with a café and waiting area.
WELCOME TO THE CARE NEIGHBORHOOD
On levels 2, 3, and 4, the clinic model revolves around a care neighborhood concept that brings services directly to the patient. Each neighborhood comprises a group of universal care suites surrounding a central hub of staff and support spaces. Staff circulation zones allow teams to easily flex across neighborhoods for improved care and collaboration. They also provide off-stage space for respite and recharge.
Easy wayfinding relieves the burden of figuring out where to go. Shades of teal, inspired by the Lake Union setting, signal patient and community spaces such as check-in, treatment rooms, amenities, and restrooms.
The clinic model puts patient care in the heart of the floor plan, with separate patient and staff flows on either side.
Care neighborhoods are linked by a patient promenade on one side and staff circulation on the other. The promenade’s easy wayfinding reduces anxiety for patients arriving for their appointments and provides gathering space for families and caregivers outside of treatment rooms.
Designed to support community as well as refuge and respite, the patient promenade allows patients and families to choose how they want to engage on any given day.
An experiential furniture approach offers places to pause and take a breath, make a phone call, have a cup of coffee, or a quiet moment alone.
“When you’re in the middle of treatment, it feels like it will never end. How can we offer those gentle reminders that nothing stays the same and there is hope here?”
– Kari Thorsen, Principal, ZGF
Seating alcoves of various sizes, inspired by the concept of eddies, offer larger spaces for social interaction and smaller spaces for respite and reflection. Eddies form when a river’s current passes a boulder or shoreline outcropping, thereby causing a calm spot where water moves in the opposite direction as the current. These calm spots created within the patient promenade telegraph to the exterior design of the window bays, becoming an inside-out architectural feature.
The promenade eschews traditional waiting rooms in favor of flexibility and choice.
Community spaces on the corner of each floor frame views to Lake Union and the Fred Hutch campus. Connection to the outside world helps dispel feelings of isolation and supports the healing process.
Patient and family input informed the new model, which saves them from going floor to floor and room to room for different services. It also reduces the overall time they spend in the building.
The design team comprised nearly 70 stakeholders, including a Patient & Family Advisory Council, nurses, providers, and clinicians. Together they tested numerous iterations of the treatment floor plan before landing on the one that worked best for all users. Before it was deployed in the new building, ZGF and GLY built a prototype in the existing clinic next door to validate the design, ensuring it would serve patients and staff for years—and new treatments—to come.
Each care neighborhood consists of 10 flex rooms used for most patient care, from bloodwork and physician consults to chemotherapy. Ample space allows both providers and caregivers to be in the room during the process.
The standardized care neighborhood footprint is flexible, easily replicated, and adaptable over time as treatments and modalities change.
Open team space fosters greater communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing. Satellite labs are just around the corner, providing real time access to test results and reducing patient wait times.
BETTER EQUIPPED FOR CARE
Level 1 houses new and expanded imaging services, with three state of the art MRI machines, mammography, and PET/MRI—a revolutionary 20,000-pound apparatus that improves the ability to detect and image tumors, make detailed diagnoses, tailor therapies, and gauge their effectiveness. Previously, imaging and therapy services were scattered in different locations. The new model consolidates both and opens space in Building 1 to provide outpatient nuclear medicine, which has grown rapidly in recent years.
“We’re excited to consolidate our services and create efficiencies in how we deliver our treatments.”
– Dr. Delphine Chen, Fred Hutch Director of Molecular Imaging and Therapy
Leading-edge MRI machines produce higher quality images in less time.
On Level 5, the new procedure suite was relocated from Building 1 and expanded to meet current demand. It features eight procedure rooms (small, medium, and large), two interventional radiology suites, and 20 pre/post-operative rooms where patients recover from outpatient procedures such as port placements and biopsies. A unique CT angiography machine allows non-invasive imaging of blood vessels to be performed onsite and projected on a large screen in the procedure room.
Nurse stations have clear sightlines to pre/post-operative recovery rooms.
SUPPORTING AND SUSTAINING STAFF
Providing a true break room has never been more important for staff wellbeing and retention, especially in an emotionally demanding cancer-care environment. Each floor features daylit respite space for care teams to decompress and recharge in private. A dedicated building entrance also provides off-stage space to transition to and from work before interacting with patients and families.
HIGH-TECH PARKING PERKS
Parking is the last thing patients need to worry about when visiting Fred Hutch. The building’s fully automated WÖHR parking system is the first of its kind in Washington state and the first in a healthcare facility. Patients simply leave their car with the valet, who pulls into a transfer cabin and sends it down on a palette that is robotically moved into place with the touch of a button. The garage is designed to retrieve over 100 vehicles per hour, reducing wait times for patients and ensuring they can get in and out of their cars safely, even after chemotherapy or a procedure. Future flexibility is an added benefit should cars become obsolete; without ramps and elevators, the flat floorplates could be converted for another use.
The garage accommodates 160 vehicles with a recall time of 150 seconds.
The South Lake Union clinic expansion is the culmination of a decades-long partnership between ZGF and Fred Hutch, an internationally renowned institution that has grown steadily in its mission to prevent and eliminate cancer. This new building puts patients at the center of leading-edge care, innovative research, and scientific breakthroughs—all in the spirit of saving lives and creating healthier communities.
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