Features: What We Build — May/June 2005

A Healing Place

New UCSD cancer center combines cutting-edge patient diagnostics and treatment with collaborative research opportunities

The clinical and research components of the Rebecca and John Moores Cancer Center are connected by a three-story atrium lobby. PHOTO ©ADRIAN VELICESCU/STANDARD PHOTOGRAPHY

The name of the game in today's specialty health care clinics is one-stop shopping, creating facilities where patients can get everything they need under one roof. For cancer care, that includes prevention, diagnosis, counseling, research, education and treatment. And in today's cash-tight medical world, the most successful clinics are those that can attract the best research minds and the all-important grants that follow them.

Both of those needs drove the creation of the new $104-million Rebecca and John Moores Cancer Center on the University of California San Diego medical campus in La Jolla, Calif. The project was completed in December 2004 by the Newport Beach office of McCarthy Building Cos. Construction costs totaled $84.5 million.

"Creating a space that was appealing to the public, patients and researchers alike was a primary goal of this project," says Ron Hall, executive vice president at McCarthy. "The final solution was to lay out the facility so that researchers and clinicians all would be housed in one central location, enhancing communication."

The upper levels of the 270,000-sq-ft center were built primarily to house research areas while the first floor includes the lobby, administrative areas and exam rooms.

"We wanted to encourage the interaction among doctors and cancer prevention and control experts, which could accelerate the search for cancer cures," says Ted Hyman, a principal with Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership, Los Angeles, the project architect.

Two in One

The team reduced the apparent scale of the sprawling center by breaking it into two pieces-a three-story clinic/administration facility and a five-story laboratory/research tower connected by a three-story atrium.

"The building was designed as a series of interlocking masses," Hyman says. "This created a village atmosphere, as opposed to one large building that could intimidate visitors and impact the overall character of the University Health Sciences Campus."

The exterior uses six different finishes, including stainless steel shingles, plaster, metal panels, precast concrete, stone, and curtain wall. PHOTO ©RMA PHOTOGRAPHY INC.

The two-structure plan also allowed for separation of the more costly structural and mechanical-electrical-plumbing systems in the laboratories from those on the clinical and office side.

To add visual character, the exterior was built using six different finishes, including stainless steel shingles, plaster, metal panels, precast concrete, stone and curtain wall wrapping both the front and back.

"Green Rimex shingles were used on the building entry and at the auditorium to highlight those common spaces," says Hyman. "The material changes color depending on sun angles, which gives the skin an ever-changing appearance as one moves around the building. This material offers the added benefit of fade-resistance and will require no maintenance."

The acid-etched stainless steel shingles range in color from turquoise and green to yellow and purple, depending on how they are viewed. The sandstone was imported from India and the shingles were manufactured in England.

"The diversity of the exterior building materials alone posed a significant challenge to the construction process," says Charles Kaminski, UCSD senior architect, who provided project oversight for the cancer center. "The McCarthy team helped to overcome these challenges by building a complete exterior mock-up of the skin systems that allowed us to test each type."

The mock-ups included air and water infiltration testing to identify and revise some of the materials and details, says McCarthy Project Manager Khatchig Tchapadarian.

The radiology department/imaging center includes one of the most advanced MRI units available, a component not included in the original program, says Hyman.

Radiation shielding for the MRI unit and linear accelerator required 500 cu yd of high-density concrete, at a cost of about $1,100 a yd, "an expensive way to go," says Tchapadarian. "But our other choices were 10-ft-thick concrete walls or steel plates, and the building footprint didn't allow for those."

The center also incorporates, as part of its mechanical system, the first two thermal fluid heaters ever to be used in San Diego County, says Tchapadarian. The TFH is part of a sealed system used to generate steam for sterilization machines.

"We came up with a design for bypassing steam exhaust, a process that captures off-steam from equipment that is less intrusive to the facility's equipment and the overall interior environment," says Tchapadarian. The structural concrete shear walls for the lab tower required McCarthy to manufacture a pump hose adapter to seal the concrete with segregation and cold joints.

The atrium lobby overlooks an appealing outdoor courtyard that features a bamboo garden, seating area and a dry stream bed anchored by boulders. PHOTO ©ADRIAN VELICESCU/STANDARD PHOTOGRAPHY

The Zen Within

The project team focused on patient and visitor comfort throughout the interior of the Moores Cancer Center by bringing the outside in. The atrium lobby overlooks an outdoor courtyard that features a "Zen-like" bamboo garden, seating area and a meandering dry stream bed anchored by boulders. Extensive garden spaces and a walking path extend out to the facility's grounds.

"The healing environment is reinforced by the gardens, ease of wayfinding for sick patients and using materials that create a domestic, warm setting, all the while providing the highly technical infrastructure necessary for treatment," Hyman says. The first floor lobby also features stone tile walls with full-height glass windows that look out to the courtyard.

A wood-tiled shingle ceiling system constructed of fire-treated plywood, staggered to create a diagonal pattern, was used in place of standard ceiling tiles, "purely for aesthetic reasons," says Tchapadarian.

"We think we've created a comprehensive cancer center that incorporates wet bench and computational research, clinical patient care, clinical trials and cancer prevention," Hyman says. "And it also provides opportunities for the 'intellectual collisions' or gatherings, both scheduled and unscheduled, where information and idea sharing can occur."