'City' Designed for Future of Health: 
According to Plan, Anschutz Campus a Work in Progress

By Mary Voelz Chandler, Rocky Mountain News
November 17, 2007

The new Anschutz Medical Campus may not fit the exact definition of an instant city - but it comes close.

After all, the former Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora was decommissioned more than a decade ago, the first step toward creating a medical complex for a new century.

And in late fall 2005, when two new privately funded medical buildings began to attract attention for their design, the push to transform one square mile of a former military outpost and alfalfa fields into a high-tech health-care outpost was in limbo.

In the blink of an eye, that changed when the Colorado Supreme Court declined to review a challenge to keep the state from using certificates of participation to fund public facilities on the site. That smoothed the way for construction of state-funded buildings.

So the old Fitz - now the Anschutz Medical Center - began growing like a boomtown, reinventing itself in record time.

Construction following a master plan devised in the late 1990s by the architectural firm Perkins and Will has now reached critical mass. Next year, buildout will be at 60 percent of the projected 9 million square feet of construction expected by 2025 or 2030.

And with this past summer's opening of the University of Colorado Hospital and the fall arrival of the new Children's Hospital, the place has put on a very public face.

On track

This shiny new mini-city is very much a work in progresso ongoing construction challenges anyone trying to drive or walk through. But the process is following the original proposal to separate uses into specific areas of the site.

So clinical buildings - University of Colorado Hospital, Children's Hospital - are to the south of the campus, along East Colfax Avenue. Research facilities are to the northwest, and educational centers are to the northeast.

That's for now: as the new bioscience park, a Forest City development including homes and retail, grows north of Montview Boulevard, research and educational structures will seem to be more toward the center.

But what is separate also is linked. Open spaces, or quadrangles, will tie the core of the campus (Building 500, the old Fitzsimons Hospital) to development to the north. So will quadrangles to the southeast and southwest of Building 500, linking the two hospitals to research and educational facilities to the north.

Planners also have set up a horizontal system so that pedestrian and vehicular links eventually will cross the campus.

Neo-modern design

Those who established the standards for the buildings to come - all of which need approval from the University of Colorado Design Review Board - took an important step by looking to the future and requiring design to be neo-modern. Buildings must focus on brick and stone, although metal and glass also are prominent.

The Anschutz Cancer Pavilion, a component of the University of Colorado Hospital, is considered the first new building on the campus. As such "it became the paradigm (for design)," says UCDHSC resident architect Noel Copeland.

The design helped set a tone for future construction, especially in other portions of the hospital: the Anschutz Outpatient and Inpatient pavilions, Leprino Office Building, Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Institute.

Also on that modernist path are two research towers, a new research library and the Center for Bioethics and Humanities.

Some buildings (happily) push beyond that mold.

Children's Hospital does by employing a brighter, more- orangey brick. Its architects broke up the mass of the immense structure by making it look like a complex of smaller buildings, stressing the height inside with a soaring, colorful atrium.

More unusual: the Nighthorse Campbell Native Health Building, with its focus on symbols and elements from Native American traditions. And then there are the Barbara Davis Diabetes Center, with its buff brick exterior, and the Center for Dependency, Addiction and Recovery (CeDAR), a sprawling predominantly wood complex.

Parking evolving

Visitors, patients and staff now can choose from surface lots or parking structures.

Eventually, as the facilities build out and new ones are constructed, Copeland said parking will be pushed to the corners of the site - except for surface lots for the hospitals.

Two light-rail stations are planned for the complex and, eventually, a circulator will carry people around the campus, a place that changes on every visit.

Art in abundance

Officials with the state's Art in Public Places program are in the process of selecting artists for $1.2 million in art for the Anschutz Medical Campus. More than 170 artists responded to calls for entry for three categories of work. Finalists await approval from the Health Sciences Center chancellor, with sign-off expected next month from the arts council:

• The Big Picture: one or more pieces designed to tie together the campus through the two commons areas along East 17th Place. Budget: $700,000o five artists interviewed.
• Surprises: up to 10 smaller works by Colorado artists to offer a counterpoint to the larger projects. Budget: up to $100,000o seven artists interviewed.
• Atriums: Pieces in the main entrance of the library, and in the atrium of the Education II Building. Budget: up to $200,000 for each pieceo seven artists interviewed.

UCDHSC Research Complex I
Fentress Architects with Kling Stubbins
600,640 square feet
$209 million

The first research tower designed by the Fentress team will be connected to a second, a $236-million research building to be completed in 2008. The complex is linked by several pedestrian bridges to bring together 20 research departments. The varying heights and design elements that relate, but do not mimic each other, mark these sleek buildings.

 

The Barbara Davis Diabetes Center
Anderson MasonDale Architects
112,000 square feet
$23 million

The privately financed center was among the earliest buildings to open on the Anschutz Medical Campus. It is notable for its prominent and welcoming stair tower, buff-colored brick exterior, clean modernist lines, varied window heights and amoeba-shaped playhouse sited off the front facade.

The Nighthorse Campbell Native Health Building
MOA Architecture
50,000 square feet
$10 million

The most expressive building on the medical campus, and one of the first, serves American Indians across the country. Designed by an American Indian- owned firm, it seeks to blend new technology with the symbolism and patterns related to three native groups and consider the impact of nature. Thus the main entrance is to the east and the sun, and circular elements are repeated throughout, including a council ring, a rotunda topped by a tepee-shaped skylight and an auditorium that suggests a kiva.

University of Colorado Hospital
Architects involved in its five building components include Perkins + Will, HDR Architecture, AndersonMasonDale Architects, Davis Partnership Architects and H+L Architecture
1.7 million square feet
$599.7 million total

The UCH components - Anschutz Inpatient Pavilion, Cancer Pavilion and Outpatient Paviliono Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Instituteo and Leprino Office Building - share a similar palette in terms of the use of rosy-colored brick with metal accents. Of note: the contrast of curves that define some facades, set against other buildings' more angular presence, plus the links formed to knit separate structures into a whole.

 

Center for Dependency, Addiction and Recovery (CeDAR)
AndersonMason Dale Architects
1.7 million square feet
$14 million

The aptly named CeDAR is a low-slung, predominantly wood complex that looks more like a mountain resort than a residential addiction treatment facility. Its buildings cluster around courtyards and paths that offer clients opportunities for meditation and exercise. CeDAR taps into history by incorporating the old Commander's House at Fitzsimons, now called the Lori Wolf House.

The Children's Hospital
Design architect Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership, with architect of record H+L Architecture
1.44 million square feet
$560 million

The designers used a brighter, more-orange brick for Children's than the ruddy material favored by the University of Colorado Hospital. A rhythmic metal canopy marks Children's presence on East 16th Avenue, though one of its two parking structures hides some of that from the road. Children's is designed to appear as a clutch of smaller buildings, with curved metal elements and brick walls that aim for a softer appearance. The interior shines, especially the Boettcher Atrium, with a terrazzo floor designed by Carolyn Braaksma, soaring glass wall by Larry Kirkland, plus images and design elements by John Fielder.

 

Research Library
Davis Partnership Architects, with Centerbrook
113,000 square feet
$34 million

This multipurpose building just south of Montview Boulevard helps form a link from the medical campus to the proposed bioscience park to the north. Copious glass and metal spark the building, which stands out for the flared roof on its atrium tower, along with other angular elements.

© Rocky Mountain News