The Children's Hospital Opens New Facility in Aurora, Colo.

by Russell Boniface
Associate Editor

How do you . . . create a new, state-of-the-art pediatric facility that embraces family-centered care and provides comfort, amenities, and a peaceful environment?

Summary: The Children's Hospital (TCH) in Aurora, Colo., opened its new 1.4-million-square-foot, $560 million pediatric hospital last October, the largest in Colorado. Situated on the 48 acres of the University of Colorado Health Science Center (UCHSC) Fitzsimmons campus, the new children’s hospital features views of Denver and the Rocky Mountains. The new facility is 73 percent larger than the original facility in Denver and will treat more than 100,000 children per year. The new hospital was a true collaborative effort among Denver-based H+L Architects; Portland, Oreg.-based design architect Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects (ZGF); St. Louis-based McCarthy Building Companies, Inc.; and Denver-based venture Partner Gerald H. Phipps, Inc.

The Children's Hospital, serving patients up to 19 years old, was designed to create an environment of hope, healing, comfort, and peace for children and their families. The hospital décor uses a palette of colors, artwork, and natural light to help raise the spirits of patients and caretakers. Bright colors are featured in the hospital’s walls, floors, carpets, graphics, and fabric. The colors blend wayfinding, meet the programmatic components of the physicians and nurses, and reflect the mood of different spaces. The exterior of the building—at nine-stories—uses brick, metal panels, glazing, and landscaping to match the colors of the Colorado region. There is extensive glazing for natural light that employs energy-efficient sun shades, fritted glass, and shadow boxes to reduce heat gain.

Expanded facilities to treat 100,000 children
The hospital features 270 beds, 14 operating rooms, 2 cardiology surgical operating rooms, and 9 minor surgical suites. Amenities for young patients include special considerations for those too old to be reassured by pictures of kitties and duckies: a teen lounge with a movie theatre, iPod hook ups, pizza delivery, and a private phone booth. The hospital features spaces for meditation and reflection, sleep rooms for families, respite areas with mountain views, rooftop terraces, and lounge areas for patients, families, and staff. Also included are an exercise room, chapel, library, and outdoor spaces. A four-story, atrium—with a terrazzo art floor—measures 11,000 square feet. The building’s subtle curvilinear shapes assist with movement and circulation through the project.

Family-centered pediatric care
Planning for the Children’s Hospital began in 2001, and it was constructed in 41 months. H+L Architects and ZGF split the medical planning. ZGF led for the aesthetic issues and were the master planners for the site, and H+L took the lead in the site infrastructure and implementation. H+L led in areas including the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), the cardiac intensive care (CICU), the L-shaped inpatient towers, parking structures, an ambulatory clinic, and a behavioral health building. ZGF led with the interior and exterior design, including operating rooms, radiology areas, and surgical rooms.

“Kids need a kids’ hospital,” says Mike Ossian, AIA, principal-in-charge at H+L Architects. “I think the design and construction team bought into the fact that it’s for kids. Everybody understood it could be their child or grandchild.” TCH was designed to meet the needs of children but also be a family-centered care center. Says Ossian: “In everything—the waiting areas, the exam rooms, the patient rooms—we thought about the family, not just the patient. When you treat a child, you treat the whole family.”

Patrick Johnson, AIA, was the H+L project manager. “The amenities include space for families to be able to stay in the room with the patient, sleep rooms that are outside the rooms, lounge areas, and a park setting,” he explains. “They wanted a design where families can stay for days, so there are amenities like room service, laundry facilities, and a barber shop. There are also roof plaza respite areas adjacent to the ICU care.”

An architectural beacon; the color design
Bob Packard, Assoc AIA, managing partner at ZGF and ZGF principal planner on the project, says the Children’s Hospital wanted to create an identifiable healing hospital for children. “The architecture needed to break down the scale and mass of the building to an approachable, architectural beacon that met the programmatic requirements of the physicians and nurses,” he explains. “Then, we had to transfer that notion internally.

“We used five color palettes throughout the building—green, violet, turquoise, yellow, and blue. We know certain colors have different psychological effects on people. The five palettes reinforce different zones, the programmatic components of the building, and the activity levels within those programs,” Packard continues. “For example, the spirited zones use the spirited palette of bright invigorating colors. This palette is used in the lobbies and cafeterias. Other zones that are more tranquil and contemplative use a tranquil palette, such as in the intensive care and chapel areas.”

Artwork also adds to the color palette. “The color and art connect emotionally with people, reduce stress, and elevate the spirit. The notion of providing distractions came in the form of art. We needed the environment to be supportive emotionally and psychologically. Patients, caretakers, and staff can see 100 different things to uplift the spirit.” Packard points out that the atrium serves as a community living room. “The atrium is where you see a lot of the color initially, and those colors move out throughout the hospital.”

True collaborative effort
Ossian says there were challenges on the project. “The contractors produced 30,000 square feet a month,” he recalls. “At one point the design team was over 250 people, and on the construction side it was 1,400 people. It was very complex and as collaborative as I’ve seen on any project.”

Adds Johnson, “It was a challenge designing a hospital for children that’s fresh—where they discover new things—as a fast-track project. There was an atmosphere within the team of trading off to keep moving and rolling with the punches. There was collaboration among the designers, physicians, engineers, and contractors. It was critical to find ways to listen to one another, make sure there was understanding, and figure out how to hold this together.”