Swedish Southwest Emergency Center provides full-service emergency care to the residents of Jefferson County, Colorado, and the southwest metropolitan Denver area. Featuring 18 examination rooms, including 5 holding/observation rooms, this facility also offers a full range of diagnostic imaging and laboratory services on-site. An adjacent heliport allows air-transfer capabilities for critical cases.

This community-based facility allows for advanced emergency care “close to home,” while alleviating visits to Swedish Medical Center’s main campus emergency department. Swedish Southwest Emergency Center offers the benefits of immediate intervention for emergencies in which treatment time is critical and of overnight monitoring and testing of patients, notably chest-pain cases.

Exterior planes and materials feature components of an Arts and Crafts style. Pitched roofs, stone columns, and prairie grasses reinforce this detail, blending with surrounding developments and the Colorado plains beyond. Interiors reflect this style, as well—high-volume ceilings greet visitors in the main lobby, and the use of stone, warm wood tones, and vegetation brings the outdoors inside. Greens, golds, and brown, colors of nature, bring “Colorado” into the interiors.


The facility is designed to flow patient traffic straight into examination rooms, either through the pedestrian entrance or a separate ambulance drop-off area. Diagnostic services (including laboratory and imaging) are located adjacent to, but outside, the “racetrack” of treatment spaces, allowing ease of access when needed. CT scans and x-rays can be digitally transferred to the main Swedish facility and to physicians’ offices for shared viewing via the Picture Archiving Communications System.

Project category: New construction (completed October 2005)

Chief administrator: Will Wagnon, COO, (303) 788-5000

Firm: Gould Turner Group, PC, (615) 297-3122

Design team: Linda S. Marzialo, AIA, ACHA, Principal-in-Charge; David B. Gregory, AIA, Project Manager; Tiana N. Lemons, NCIDQ, Interior Designer (Gould Turner Group, PC); Terry Compton, PE, Team Leader, MEP Engineering (Smith Seckman Reid, Inc.); Jim Parker, PhD, PE, Principal, Structural Engineering (Structural Design Group, Inc.); Jim Littlejohn, PE, Principal, Civil Engineering (Littlejohn Engineering Associates, Inc.)

Photography: © Rion Rizzo, Creative Sources Photography

Total building area (sq. ft.): 29,123

Construction cost/sq. ft.: $282

Total construction cost (excluding land): $8,200,000