Project category: Addition (completed January 2004)

Chief administrator: Tom Laux, President and CEO, (765) 349-6502

Firm: ARTEKNA, (317) 955-5090

Design team: Robert D. Hibler, AIA, NCARB, Principal-in-Charge; Gregory W. Lewis, AIA, Principal (ARTEKNA); Karl Meyer, President; Chris McCracken, Project Manager (Meyer Najam Construction); Paul Brumleve, PE, Structural Engineer (Lynch, Harrison & Brumleve)

Photography: Wilbur Montgomery, WM Photographic Services, Inc.

Total building area (sq. ft.): 24,681

Construction cost/sq. ft.: $195

Total cost (excluding land): $4,803,769


In response to the owner’s desire to enhance the environment of patient care, a new garden was carved from a compact hospital campus to locate the Regional Cancer Center and Medical Office Building at Morgan Hospital and Medical Center. The site design features a garden plaza, a trellis-inspired canopy, and a terraced orchard.

At the Garden Level, the new facility offers expanded medical oncology/hematology services with an Open-Infusion, or Chemotherapy Care, area that overlooks the plaza, where alternating flowering and evergreen trees celebrate life and renewal in each season. Radiation Therapy, a new service to county residents, is also included, thereby saving patients up to an hour of travel time. The interior color schemes were selected to include comforting, warm earth tones combined with brighter, springlike colors establishing a connection to the garden.

The Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Outpatient Service was also designed to take advantage of views to the plaza at the Garden Level. On the first floor, where physicians’ offices are located, curvilinear forms enhance patient privacy and are reminiscent of a garden pathway leading to the existing hospital.

Visibility and future flexibility were key issues for the owner. A tower feature was conceived as a beacon for visibility from a nearby state highway. The site has been planned to accommodate future expansion of the existing hospital’s inpatient and outpatient services, and the tower will become the connection point, or keyway. Also, the foundation, structural skeleton, and curtain-wall systems have been designed to accommodate an additional floor of vertical expansion.