Health Education Building University of Kansas Medical Center | Kansas City, Kansas, USA | 2017

Architects: CO Architects
Associate Architects: Helix Architecture + Design 
Client: University of Kansas Medical Center
General Contractor: McCown Gordon Construction, LLC.
Structural Engineers: Bob D. Campbell and Company
Landscape Architects: Land3 Studio
Photographers: Bill Timmerman, Timmerman Photography, Inc.

Changes to the teaching of health education have quickly outpaced the evolution of the buildings that support it.

Today’s approaches— including problem-based methods, social learning, new technologies, inter-professional teams, and simulation— are not been readily supported by outdated facilities designed only for didactic lectures and learning-through-memorization.

The University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC) faced such challenges.

With its medical and health professions programs scattered amongst multiple aging facilities on the campus, it sought to create a new facility from the ground up.

The Health Education Building (HEB), an interdisciplinary, multipurpose facility serving the schools of medicine, nursing, and health professions, delivers innovative solutions for a contemporary facility supporting KUMC’s evolving health sciences curricula.

It also accommodates a growing class size to train more healthcare professionals for the state’s under-served communities.

An innovative program blends new, technology-rich, flexible teaching environments for inter-professional learning with spaces for student life, community events, and street-front retail spaces that enrich and energize the health sciences community.

The 170,000-GSF, $60 million facility was completed in August 2017. At the urban scale, the Health Education Building is located on a prominent corner at the gateway intersection of Rainbow Boulevard and 39th Street.

Arguably situated at the “front door” to the academic medical campus, this site has emerged as the geographic center of an existing concentration of clinical, research and education buildings.

As such, the site’s nascent potential to attract and link campus functions and users was profound, and was a key influencer of the building’s design as a connector, destination, and bridge back to the medical campus.

The HEB’s program and design seeks to create all manners of convergence, both literally and figuratively.

Programmatically, the building is a “silo breaker” that attracts students from all health science disciplines by providing critical new learning spaces to the campus.

It gives students the opportunity to learn, train and practice together in realistic settings and simulated training centers that resemble real-world healthcare environments.

The program consists of learning studios, clinical skills and simulation suites, part-task laboratories, classrooms, student lounges, study rooms, building support, and retail.

A variety of study environments and community life spaces enable learning opportunities outside of the classroom. Physically, a key design response to the site’s connective potential is a 250-foot-long “building” bridge that passes directly through the center of the HEB and links to the adjoining Orr Major Building.

Spanning 39th Street, the enclosed bridge, with 6,000 square feet of student life space, functions as both a vibrant, energized conduit and collector for all users, and provides a much-needed thoroughfare connecting parking facilities to the north with the heart of the campus.

The building itself assumes street-like qualities, encouraging people to meet in, and move through, a vibrant civic community.

The architectural role of the Health Education Building is to hold and frame the strategic corner, becoming the front door for the medical center that conveys KUMC’s ideals of transparency, equity, innovation, and discovery.

The design is signified by a transparent, four-story “lantern-box” containing the technology-rich simulation environments. These spaces, which typically do not require access to daylight, tend to reside in a building’s interior. In contrast, the HEB showcases these fundamental, technologically sophisticated spaces afloat in a glass lantern. The shape of the visible enclosure, screened in terra-cotta rods, hints metaphorically at human anatomical features floating within a figurative skin.

Without being too literal, this expression has become an icon for the image of the medical center.

Ample use of glass also provides natural daylight and views.

The design incorporates energy-efficient systems, recycled and regional materials, and passive energy strategies.

It improves the site condition from former surface parking lots to a 22,000-SF green courtyard and 17,000 SF of vegetated roof with access, encouraging outdoor activity.

The Health Education Building has positioned itself as a catalyst for transformation, improvement and growth, taking contextual cues to reside harmoniously amongst its neighbors with a transparent expression and innovative program that unifies students, faculty, university and region.