Miller Family Pavilion and Glickman Tower, ClevelandType of facility: Heart hospital and kidney/urological institute
Project architect: NBBJ
Construction manager: Whiting-Turner Contracting Co.
Completed: September 2008
Size: 1.3 million square feet
Cost: $634 million
Cost per square foot: $488
As it planned the largest expansion in the institution's 88-year history, the Cleveland Clinic saw an opportunity to make a splash.
“They were very clear about their goal,” says Doug Parris, a partner with NBBJ architects. “They wanted to create an urban icon—from a design standpoint—for the Cleveland Clinic. Their ‘front door' wasn't evident. They wanted something people would recognize and remember as they arrived at the clinic.”
According to the judges, the designers accomplished this goal.
“The Cleveland Clinic project was stunning—the one in Cleveland,” says contest judge Steven Steinberg, healthcare principal at Emeryville, Calif.-based Ratcliff architects, emphasizing that he is referring to the Miller Family Pavilion and Glickman Tower project—not the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi hospital, which also won a Citation award.
View the Design Awards photo gallery
Read more profiles of the Design Awards winners “The patient rooms were an architect's dream,” Steinberg says. “That was our favorite among the architects.”
Steinberg explains that architects appreciated the project's minimalist approach and “Bauhaus cleanliness.”
Parris credits Cleveland Clinic President and CEO Delos “Toby” Cosgrove for having the vision to maximize the opportunity that was present as well as having the energy to be actively involved in ensuring that plans were followed through.
The pavilion consolidates the clinic's Miller Family Heart & Vascular Institute while the 12-story tower—the tallest building on campus—is home to its Glickman Urological & Kidney Institute; both are considered two of the nation's busiest programs of their kind. Design began on the tower just as construction began on the pavilion.
The pavilion's C-shape is meant to symbolize the clinic “opening its arms to the community,” Parris explains, adding that it also helps convey Cosgrove's philosophy of “healing hospitality.”
Patient rooms have floor-to-ceiling windows that offer either views of Lake Erie or downtown Cleveland, while the pavilion offers a rooftop plaza as a respite area.
