NYU Langone Health, Helen L. and Martin S. Kimmel Pavilion
© Jeff Goldberg / Esto
The Kimmel Pavilion anchors the north end of the medical center’s midtown Manhattan campus.
© Jeff Goldberg / Esto
The tower, with its six-story atrium visible from the street, celebrates openness and transparency. The lower floors of the tower, which house the diagnostic and treatment programs, connect to the corresponding floors of Tisch Hospital.
© Jeff Goldberg / Esto
The new pavilion creates a major new entry point at the north end of the campus and serves as the main front door to the hospital. “Spot,” a 38-foot-tall sculpture of a Dalmatian, perfectly balancing a taxi on its nose marks the entrance to the Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital.
© Jeff Goldberg / Esto
The lobby and atrium is connected to the rest of the campus by a grand stair and wide public concourse. The open balconies above house four levels of surgical reception and family waiting.
© Jeff Goldberg / Esto
The diagnostic and treatment floors are open to the atrium and take advantage of its light, public art, and dramatic views of the city. Patients and visitors can see back to the lobby where they entered the building, always remaining oriented within the hospital and the larger urban context.
© Jeff Goldberg / Esto
Care-team work areas are zoned to support a variety of work types, from “heads up” patient interaction to private “heads down” concentrated work, with interactive, collaborative space in the center.
© Jeff Goldberg / Esto
Each private patient room takes advantage of the site’s magnificent views of city and river. Advanced acoustic design of the curtainwall and triple-glazing create an exceptionally quiet environment, despite proximity to highway and heliport.
© NYU Langone Health
Using a tablet mounted on a swing arm on the bedside table, the patient can adjust the lighting, window shades, and temperature of the room; order meals; play music and watch video; communicate with nurses, conduct tele-consults with physicians, or video-chat with family.
© Jeff Goldberg / Esto
The Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital has a dedicated entrance and separate circulation and amenity spaces for children and their families.
© Jeff Goldberg / Esto
A dedicated children’s play area occupies the west side of the terrace, with spectacular views of the Empire State Building and the city beyond.
HONORABLE MENTION – 2019 Healthcare Design Showcase
In 2008, NYU Langone Health launched a Campus Transformation initiative to reshape NYU Langone as a world-class, patient-centered, integrated academic medical center. The remaking of the Manhattan campus both reflects and enables the larger transformation of the institution, which in the same period doubled its research funding and is now consistently ranked among the top hospitals in the country. The Helen L. and Martin S. Kimmel Pavilion, a quaternary-care hospital housing thirty-four operating and procedure rooms and 374 all-private patient rooms, anchors this transformation for the campus and its approach to care. The 21-story tower projects a new identity for NYU Langone Health, creates a new front door to the campus, and establishes a new standard for patient and staff experience, safety, efficiency, sustainability, and resilience.
Built atop four rail tunnels on a brownfield site susceptible to flooding, the tower occupies the last development opportunity on the 10-acre campus. Unlocking the potential of the site allowed NYU Langone to add over 800,000 square feet to the campus. To avoid placing any new loads on the aging tunnels, the new hospital structure was designed as a bridge, spanning across the tunnels at the sixth-floor mechanical level. The bridge supports the bed tower above, while the OR floors are suspended below.
The new hospital created an opportunity for NYU Langone to redesign how NYU Langone provides patient care, from the ways in which material moves through the building, to how post-operative care is delivered, and how family members can be accommodated overnight in the patient room. Each process and environment was designed to optimize the quality of the care, the efficiency and effectiveness of the caregiver, and the experience of the patient and family. The building also houses the Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital, a 64-bed facility that takes advantage of the resources within the main hospital while creating a separate environment for children and families.
The new patient experience begins as one arrives on the campus. The front door and lobby are set back from the street within a landscaped plaza, allowing patients to transition to a calm, welcoming, and safe environment. Inside the main lobby, a six-story atrium opens to a series of stepped, curving balconies that house the surgical reception areas above. Daylight, transparency, and views to the outside help patients and visitors to understand intuitively where they are and how to navigate the building.
The tower is designed to maximize the efficiency and value of the clinicians’ work. Supplies and equipment are distributed to the point of care by automated vehicles so that nurses spend more of their time with patients. Rooms accommodate bedside charting and in-room imaging, reducing the need for patient transport. A variety of collaboration spaces across each bed floor allows the multi-disciplinary care team to come together quickly, access patient information, and discuss care. All workspaces have access to daylight, which penetrates deep into the center of the floor, and a true “off-stage” service corridor keeps the “on-stage” areas exceptionally quiet for patients and clinicians.
Nursing units are supported by providing patients extensive control over their environment. Using a bedside digital tablet, patients can adjust lighting, window shades, and temperature in the room; the interactive footwall allows patients to post photos, watch video, order meals, and track the schedule of their care. E-glass within the sliding patient room door replaces privacy curtains, reducing the risk of healthcare-acquired infections while allowing families to control the privacy of the room. Even with a heliport just outside, advanced window-wall design and triple glazing has led to the highest possible patient satisfaction scores for acoustics.
The new inpatient tower is a critical component of a campus-wide sustainability and resiliency plan, which includes a 7.5-megawatt cogeneration plant, elevated infrastructure, and a perimeter flood barrier with operable flood gates. The hospital is designed to maintain operations through major flooding, utility outages, and other emergencies, and the building is on track to receive LEED Platinum certification
Project category: New construction
Chief administrator: Vicki Match Suna, senior vice president and vice dean for Real Estate Development and Facilities
Provider: NYU Langone Health
Firms: Ennead Architects, www.ennead.com; NBBJ, www.nbbj.com
Design team: Ennead Architects (design architect); NBBJ (associate architect); NYU Langone Health, Real Estate Development and Facilities (owner’s development team); Leslie E. Robertson Associates, RLLP (LERA) (structural engineer); Jaros Baum & Bolles (MEP/FP and telecommunications/data consultant); Langan Engineering and Environmental Services Inc. (civil engineer); Hargreaves Associates (landscape architect)
Total building area (sq. ft.): 830,000
Completed: June 2018
