CEDARS SINAI SAPERSTEIN CRITICAL CARE TOWER

DESCRIPTIVE DATA

Project No.1:            Cedars Sinai Saperstein Critical Care                                  Tower
Architecture Firm                                                                 of Record:                 Langdon Wilson
Design Firm:             Langdon Wilson
Completion Date:      2006
Role of Nominee:      Principal Designer/Project Designer

The very recently opened 150 Intensive Care Bed Tower is a replacement facility for the historic Brown-Schuman Buildings which were damaged severely during the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. The 8 story, 240,000 sf facility with 6 connecting glass bridges to the Professional Tower of the Medical Center which connect the existing operating rooms to the new intensive care units in this facility. On the lower floors, it houses the enlargement of the existing Cancer Center, a 18 bed Emergency Department expansion, and room for a 30 Bed Acute Rehab Unit for future expansion on the Plaza Level. The roof accommodates a new Medical Center Helipad which is connected by two Trauma Elevators to the Emergency Department on the Street Level for the transportation of critical patients and time sensitive transplant organs. Patient Rooms feature the most current technological advanced computerized monitoring and communications equipment. All rooms are designed as single-handed layouts to maximize the potential for patient safety design and flexibility in providing medical services. Extensive studies of room sizes, equipment layout, and headwall versus articulating arms were made to determine the optimal medical choice. 

The design features the continuation of the sandblasted architectural concrete base with a natural stone plaza entry level with warm toned silver painted aluminum skin upper patient floors above with glass visitors lobbies oriented to the paired 12 bed ICU Modules on each floor. Every ICU patient floor has a glass enclosed bridge that connects to the Main Hospital that also maintains open views between the bridges for the North Patient Tower’s patient’s desired vistas to the Hollywood Hills. The Towers strong geometry is shaped by the program and responds to this very constricted site context. The design ultimately, in giving a new north front face to the Cedars Sinai Medical Center, reshapes the character of its West Los Angeles intersection location by introducing a dynamic massing of metal curtain walls accented by cantilevered glass-enclosed floor lobbies facing and dramatic glass bridges as it re-anchors the CSMC presence in West Los Angeles and Hollywood.

AWARDS RECEIVED:      

                    Project yet to be submitted for Design Awards

PUBLICATIONS:      

                Cedars Sinai Medical Center Publication    March                 2006
                Shanghai Medical Facilities Magazine                                   October  2006