Highrise Healthcare
Oregon Health & Science University, Center for Health & Healing Building 2
Healthcare
Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) is Oregon’s only public academic health center dedicated to education and research. OHSU’s primary facilities have been located on Marquam Hill, above downtown Portland, for over a century. The 132-year old public university is known as a torchbearer, consistently operating as the top-ranked adult and children’s hospital in Oregon.
OHSU’s new Center for Health and Healing Building 2 (CHH2) is emblematic of the University’s commitment to advancing health sciences through innovation and discovery. Bringing together research and healing into one place, CHH2 provides Oregonians with a new model for health care.
Location
Portland, OR
Square Feet
400,000 SF
Completion date
2019
Project Component
Architecture services
Interior design and space planning
Certifications
LEED Gold®
CHH2 is just a block from the Willamette River and immediately adjacent to Elizabeth Caruthers Park, allowing natural elements to play an important role in creating a healing environment. The building’s orientation takes full advantage of these public spaces and creates views of the surrounding landscape for patients.
The first seven floors of the 15-story facility are dedicated to ambulatory care, outpatient surgery, and an unprecedented outpatient care unit for extended stay recovery. Specially designed 48-hour recovery beds allow healthcare professionals at CHH2 to provide services typically constrained to an inpatient facility – and get patients home to their families faster. CHH floors 8, 9, and 10 focus solely on patient care and healing with a unique “neighborhood” module. Private clinic rooms arranged along the perimeter are exposed to healing daylight and sweeping city views as they ring a series of centralized nursing stations for easy access. The Knight Cancer Institute oncology clinics, infusion, and clinical trials are housed in the upper six floors of the facility, offering OHSU patients direct access to promising new therapies.
CHH2 creates space for an integrated, holistic approach to health care delivery. Working together to improve operational efficiency and enhance the patient experience, OHSU and the design team collocated previously disparate services, marking a shift away from OHSU’s historically decentralized approach to care. Digestive health clinics, infusion, laboratory, overnight recovery, pharmacy, specialty procedure units, and surgery now coexist within one building and are supported by a single “mission control center” that monitors that status of shared procedure rooms, clinical support, and prep and recovery spaces. Patients can receive most advanced treatments in a setting optimized for convenience, comfort and fast recovery.
Existing operating rooms in CHH1 are connected to CHH2’s surgery by a new sky bridge. The double-deck bridge allows sterile transfer of doctors and patients on one side, with visitors and staff on the other side, the two separated by an opaque glass wall.
“For the first time in Oregon, we arebringingtogether treatment, research,patient and guest housinginone centralized location. These buildings are a palpable, visible reminder of OHSU’s efforts to improve how we provide the very best care to patients.”
OHSU President Danny Jacobs, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.C.S.
The interior design is inspired by elements of the Pacific Northwest region and the concept of biophilia—our innate desire to connect with nature. A five-foot-high frieze made from a photograph of Oregon poplar trees wraps around the first-floor lobby.
At CCH2, recovery and healing come in more than one form. The design of the interior environment incorporates strategies proven to reduce stress and fatigue for staff and patients, improve patient safety, and advance overall healthcare quality. Single patient rooms offer privacy, relief from sound, and reduced risk of infection. Situated just one block from the Willamette River and adjacent to Elizabeth Caruthers Park, patients are surrounded by the natural elements of the Pacific Northwest. Patients and staff have access to outdoor experiences from all corners of the facility, whether it is a balcony for fresh air or a family holding space with oversized windows for gazing at Mt. Hood as they wait. After traveling long distances to seek care unavailable in their home communities, visitors are welcomed by local and regional references to nearby rivers, city parks, and state forests through the materiality of the interior environment.
CHH2 is setting a benchmark for care excellence in Oregon and beyond.
The infusion center offers a mix of private, semiprivate, and open bay patient treatment areas that maximize natural light, patient choice and privacy, and caregiver line of sight.
The University of Arizona, The University of Arizona Cancer Center at Dignity Health St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center
