Project Description
FROM FORUM STUDIO:
The Mercy Virtual Care Center is the beginning of a transformational approach to healthcare with 125,000-square-feet of highly flexible space that supports enhanced health care delivery systems that operate 24/7, incorporating telemedicine, care management, research analytics and the business infrastructure to support and advance virtual care to both Mercy and non-affiliated patients. This new approach of competing healthcare providers working collaboratively to cure our nations broken healthcare system occurs in the first building of the 40-acre integrated Mercy Campus that reunites and facilitates learning, ministry, telemedicine, and clinical care.
The Virtual Care Center was carefully positioned to save existing, mature trees that provide natural shading to the building’s south and west exposures, while also offering an amazing indoor/outdoor experience for the building’s occupants. The building engages the site at the ground plane in a weightless manner and allows nature’s wonder and its daylight to visually enter the building so a symbiosis between man and nature will occur.
Rectangular 30,000-square-foot floor plates are designed to optimize flexibility and accommodate changing programs and technologies of the future. Each floor is strongly expressed as horizontal bands that represent the stability and strength of Mercy’s platform. Floor-to-ceiling glass spans between each horizontal band and represents the transparency of the Mercy mission and the accessibility to their services. On each floor the glass strategically undulates to create entry locations and balconies on upper floors. These curved forms represent the flexibility of Mercy’s evolving response to the future of healthcare service. The balconies also allow the building occupants to easily step outside from their indoor workplace to refresh and to feel the impact of nature on their spirit, emotions, creativity and their productivity.