The Cancer Center is designed as a comprehensive Oncology Center integrating Radiation Therapy, Chemotherapy, Surgical Services, Diagnostics, and Patient Education.

The 4,500-square-meter facility consolidates many of the services currently scattered throughout the campus into one multimodality center. This facility brings many of the oncology specialists together in one building, creating a multidisciplinary team organization for physicians and staff.

The site is the result of the union of four different small parcels, resulting in an irregular inverted L shape with an adjacent rectangular parcel, both of which are connected only by a narrow strip of land. The rectangular portion will be designed to be incorporated into the neighborhood fabric to be used as a small community park adjacent to the center’s healing garden.

The primary construction method is to use cast-in-place concrete for major elements on the south and west façades and precast panels along the north and east elevations, where close proximity of existing buildings provides challenges to erecting forms.

Principles of the design concept are to express the honesty and tenacity necessary to persevere through prescribed treatment plans, to embrace and reach out to the urban context, and to give hints of warmth, energy, and comfort amidst the strong concrete forms.

Cancer treatment can be painful and frightening. ABC’s Cancer Center design concept embraces the toughness, tenacity, honesty, and human compassion necessary for the successful treatment of cancer and showcases it to the dense urban fabric that makes up Mexico City.

Project category: Project in progress (January 2007)

Chief administrator: Lawrence V. Meagher, Jr., Hospital Administrative Director, (525) 5-5230-8003

Firm: HKS, Inc., (214) 969-5599

Design team: Dan Noble, FAIA, FACHA, Principal Designer; Bruce Johnson, AIA, Principal Project Manager; Kim Cheney, Project Designer (HKS, Inc.); Dulce Torres, Project Architect (HKS Arquitectos S. de R.L. de C.V.)

Illustration: HKS, Inc.

Total building area (sq. ft.): 48,000

Construction cost/sq. ft.: $167

Total construction cost (excluding land): $8,000,000