CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL CENTER, Omaha, Neb.
RETROFIT TEAM
GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Kiewit
ARCHITECT: HDR
MECHANICAL, PLUMBING, HVAC ENGINEER: The Waldinger Corp.
METAL STUDS AND DRYWALL: E&K
EXTERIOR CLOSURE: Architectural Wall Systems
MATERIALS
The hospital received a 450,000-square-foot expansion and 100,000-square-foot renovation. The new facility, known as the Hubbard Center, is the most visible and colorful part of Children’s Hospital and Medical Center, fronting Omaha’s busiest corridor and integrating architecturally with the existing facilities. It reunites the children’s intensive care and cardiac-care units, formerly across the street in another hospital, with the children’s hospital and its expansion. A unitized curtainwall envelope seamlessly ties the existing hospital to the expansion.
Adjacent to the new tower is an expanded onsite parking garage that features a large digital media screen, as well as a perforated skin that showcases shifting colors, creating a new face for the campus. The interior complements the colorful exterior, incorporating color schemes and motifs from the existing buildings into the new spaces to unify the architecture and give the Hubbard Center a dynamic and playful appearance.
The design team developed an environment that is friendly and appealing to patients of any age. Common areas feature educational games and engaging diversions that bridge the hospital’s patient-age divide. Bright, playful colors and a creative lighting design are incorporated throughout the interiors, like the vivid family amenity spaces that feature adjustable color-changing lighting and the care spaces that utilize soothing starry-sky ceilings complete with constellation lighting. Each patient floor has a dedicated shape and distinct color scheme for enhanced wayfinding and a strong sense of place.
Large ICU-level patient rooms built for flexibility include user-controlled lighting to support patients and their families’ routines and comfort. Each inpatient room has an entertainment system through which families can pull up live language interpreters, including sign language.
The following is a sampling of materials used in the project:
DIGITAL MEDIA SCREEN: Daktronics
COLOR-CHANGING LIGHTING IN AMENITY SPACES: Lumenpulse
USER-CONTROLLED LIGHTING IN PATIENT ROOMS: Visa Lighting, USAI Lighting, Qtran and Encelium
EXTERIOR COLOR-CHANGING LIGHTING: Traxon Technologies
THE RETROFIT
Since its founding in 1948, amid the polio epidemic, Children’s Hospital and Medical Center has been on the leading edge of pediatric care across the region as Nebraska’s only freestanding children’s hospital. This has led to steady, significant growth in the number of patients served and the variety of programs and services provided. During the last decade, the hospital reached capacity in its existing facilities and decided to grow—in scope and space—to continue to meet the needs of children and families in the region.
This ambitious expansion transforms a confined, urban site into a 10-story, state-of-the-art hospital that doubles the size of the existing hospital, adding 100 beds, new services, and new and improved features, including 17 operating rooms, a 20-room emergency department, hematology and oncology unit with its own dedicated floor, rooftop helipad and more.
The Hubbard Center’s design aims to provide a sense of normalcy and everyday comforts for patients and their families via an expansive café area, a chapel and meeting space, intuitive patient check-in/check-out, and outdoor viewing gardens. A glass solarium provides space for events, and an indoor garden allows families and patients to gather and relax outside the care space.
PHOTO: 2021 Dan Schwalm, courtesy HDR