The new School of Nursing and Student Community Center in Houston’s world-famous Texas Medical Center establishes a much broader meaning for the concept of a place of healing.

Designed by BNIM Architects, a multidisciplinary firm with offices in Kansas City, Missouri and Houston, in collaboration with Lake/Flato Architects of San Antonio, Texas, the award-winning building is a living example of how restorative design strategies can re-establish the connection between buildings and nature – to the benefit not only of the school but of the surrounding community and environment as well.

“Nursing is not only scientific and knowledge-based; there is also caring and compassion – the healing component,” explains Patricia L. Starck, D.S.N., the nursing school’s dean. “So we wanted a building that feels like a nurturing environment the minute you enter it.”

“We are a health science center, so we should educate our students in healthy buildings,” she notes. “Also, we believe that a healthy, environmentally-friendly facility will be much more efficient to operate; we’re looking forward to those advantages, too.”

A vertical campus

The building features five unique façades designed with their own fenestration and sun screening strategies. Photograph © 2005 Richard Payne Photography. Courtesy of BNIM Architects.

Completed in October 2004 at a cost of $57 million, the School of Nursing and Student Community Center is the largest green academic building in the Southwest United States. The 194,000-square-foot, eight-story facility located adjacent to Grant Fay Park (one of the few open spaces within the Texas Medical Center) includes approximately 20,000 square feet of state-of-the-art classrooms, a 200-seat auditorium, a café and dining room, a bookstore, a student lounge, student government offices, a research laboratory and faculty offices.

Because of the limited space at the site, the center was designed in several tiers, as a ‘vertical campus’: the lowest two levels contain the most public spaces, the third and fourth floors hold teaching spaces, the next three feature faculty and staff offices as well as the Center for Nursing Research, with the Dean’s suite residing on the eighth floor.

“We knew we’d have to think differently to create a campus feel within the limited space,” says Kimberly Hickson, BNIM project manager. “That’s what eventually led us to the idea of a vertical campus.”

Designing for health and community

The building’s roles include sheltering and healing, in addition to teaching and inspiring good health in its occupants and the surrounding community. Photograph © 2005 Hester + Hardaway Photographers.

The UT Health Science Center’s goal for the building was to achieve a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold rating from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). However, many features go well beyond LEED Gold guidelines. For example, the structure was designed to accommodate systems – including a photovoltaic array on the rooftop – that could eventually take it to a Platinum level.

The university had further specific mandates – such as achieving energy costs 70 percent below those of the UT School of Public Health next door and limiting construction costs to no more than 5 percent above the school’s standard building construction cost.

Another important project goal was to create a strong sense of community.

“As the design moved forward, the idea evolved that it would be great to make it the heart of the campus. It gave us the opportunity to create a central meeting place for nursing students as well as medical students and allied professionals from other parts of the campus. In fact, the building’s name changed to reflect that: it started out as the nursing school, but now it’s the School of Nursing and Student Community Center,” explains Steve McDowell, design principal for BNIM.

Restorative design

BNIM’s Bob Berkebile says, “I hope that’s the greatest success here – that the building’s occupants are healthier and more productive, and therefore, that the teaching and learning are happening at higher levels of success than before, as a result of the environment we’ve all created together.” Photograph © 2005 Hester + Hardaway Photographers.

The building’s roles are many: on one hand, sheltering and healing; on the other, teaching and inspiring good health in its occupants and the surrounding community.

“I don’t know of any other teaching facility that has adopted the mission of its institution in the same way that this building does,” says McDowell.

To achieve the university’s educational and environmental goals, BNIM incorporated a blend of advanced technologies – from smart glazing to under-floor air distribution – with traditional strategies like using daylight to its full advantage.

The design also addressed a number of challenges. Heat, humidity and extreme sun; periodic flooding from extreme rain patterns; and poor regional air quality all place enormous demands on the building and its support systems. Further, the building site was not ideal: a dense location with size and border restrictions dictated the least desirable orientation (with the long dimension running north-south).

Some sustainable design strategies that address these and other challenges include:

Energy efficiency: The building envelope, lighting and mechanical systems were all designed with energy efficiency in mind. In fact, the building realizes an annual savings in energy costs of more than $38,000 (based on 2004 energy costs and a building designed to ASHRAE 90.1 standards). Strategies to attain this impressive energy performance include plenum under-floor air distribution (which reduces needed fan horsepower and allows cool air to be delivered at higher temperatures with increased comfort) and a heat recovery system that uses heat from the general exhaust system to preheat/cool outside air. Innovative use of natural daylight and fenestration also contributes to energy efficiency.

Use of daylight: The design gives all occupants as much natural light as possible. “With more daylight and good views of the adjacent park and campus, people have the sense of moving through a landscape rather than being contained by a building,” explains Bob Berkebile, principal at BNIM. “Also – importantly – we know that introducing daylight increases visual acuity and cognitive capacity, which improves the ability to learn.”

“Knowing that we had a limited area and that the office occupants all wanted access to daylight, we developed three separate strategies for bringing in daylight,” explains McDowell. “From the top, we penetrated down four floors using three atria. The middle two floors – the teaching spaces – are connected with a horizontal atrium looking into the park. Finally, for the lower floors, where we could rely on shading from the trees, we used much more glass.”

Five unique façades: The challenges of the building site and the strong Houston sun are reflected in the building’s four sides and roof. Each side was designed with its own fenestration and sun screening strategies and strives to accept desired daylight while rejecting unwanted heat.

The south side features fairly extensive amounts of lightly tinted glass with horizontal shading. On the east (with views to the park), horizontal and vertical fabric elements both shield and reflect light into the building. “They catch the daylight and add a luminescence, or glow, that seems to generate more light,” says McDowell. The western exposure has the least amount of glass and uses protective, perforated aluminum panels as well as narrow slot windows near the ceiling to illuminate the inside space with reflective light. Finally, the north side enjoys the most – and clearest – glass. The fifth façade, the roof, helps reduce the heat island effect with green roof areas.

Water efficiency: The roof also plays an important role in the building’s water efficiency. Houston gets all its rain in a fairly short period of time, so water storage is an important strategy. Rainwater is harvested from membrane roof areas and stored on-site in five 30,000-gallon storage tanks. The tanks capture more than 800,000 gallons of rainwater throughout the year – plenty for the 42,000 gallons per month needed for toilets and irrigation. The water storage, combined with efficient plumbing features such as greywater systems, waterless urinals, low-flow toilets and low-flow showers, has resulted in a 48 percent reduction in total water use for the building (compared to a baseline calculation).

Low-impact resources and materials: The structure was designed and built with great attention to resources and materials that minimize environmental impact. Reclaimed brick, recycled sinker cypress logs, specially fabricated aluminum panels (with 92 percent recycled content) and structural steel specified to have more than 80 percent recycled content represent just some of the low-impact materials. Other materials that contain post-consumer or post-industrial content include metals, doors and frames, wood, glazing and glass, carpet tile and furniture. See the complete materials list on page 17.

Indoor air quality: An air quality management plan for the construction period and pre-occupancy phases flushed out impure air. Selecting healthy materials and isolating and exhausting the sources of indoor pollution with a flexible, occupant-controlled ventilation system helped ensure high standards of air quality upon occupancy.

In addition to these environmental features, the building has also met its teaching objectives, according to Dean Starck. “We believe we’re now the most technologically advanced school of nursing in the country,” she says. “And with an entire floor dedicated to nursing research, the school now has the kind of equipment and laboratories that will attract world-class researchers.”

A wealth of experience

Dean Starck says seeing nature all day long, no matter which way you turn, helps to lift the human spirit. Photograph © 2005 Filippo Castore.

BNIM’s Bob Berkebile doesn’t claim to be an expert in restorative design (he’s not sure one exists yet), but he will acknowledge that the design team brings to the table a wealth of knowledge and experience from working in this field for two decades.

Beyond that, BNIM’s design philosophy is founded on a holistic approach that includes all stakeholders from the outset. “We bring the effort and the intention to make our projects a real collaboration – so we have all the stakeholders involved in the conceptual work early on,” he explains. “We invest energy in creating a dialogue where the end result is far greater than the sum of all the individual participants.” This was especially important with the number of stakeholders collaborating on this project, including a large client group and 17 outside firms.

“In restorative design, the real objective is to do what we can to create a ‘living building’ – or at the least have restorative strategies built into the design,” says Berkebile. “I hope that’s the greatest success here – that the building’s occupants are healthier and more productive, and therefore, that the teaching and learning are happening at higher levels of success than before, as a result of the environment we’ve all created together.”

A sense of nature and community

Because of the limited space at the site, the center was designed in several tiers, as a "vertical campus." Photograph © 2005 Richard Payne Photography. Courtesy of BNIM Architects.

The university acknowledges that success. “The building is meeting – and exceeding – our vision,” says Dean Starck. “Just coming to work in a building that’s light, airy and fresh – seeing nature all day long no matter which way you turn, that does something to lift the human spirit. It’s a lovely place to be.”

She readily shares an anecdote about students who, upon first entering the computer skills laboratory, ran across to the wall of windows and the green trees beyond ‘like children in a candy store.’ Likewise, the dean reports that faculty value the community feeling created by the atria and lobby spaces around their offices.

“It gives us a sense of the heart of the campus,” she says. “It’s a space that invites people to come in, which has helped our sense of camaraderie in the Medical Center enormously.”

“The building has improved the sense of community on multiple levels: at the UT School of Nursing, around the Texas Medical Center and in the wider Houston community,” explains McDowell.

As the only LEED-registered building currently at the Texas Medical Center and one of only a handful in Houston, it has generated a lot of interest. “The project is recognized as one of the leaders in a great ongoing transformation for this city,” he adds.

“We’re proud that we’ve been able to set new standards for performance – not only for the university and the Medical Center, but for Texas – because the building embraces natural systems and human potential in new ways,” says Berkebile. “My hope is that it will be more than just the change in amount of energy and resources the building uses, but that it will become pedagogical in its own right, introducing a new virus on the campus that will infect the other institutions – in a good way.”

The School of Nursing and Student Community Center

University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Texas, campus

designed by: BNIM Architects in collaboration with Lake/Flato Architects
completed: October 2004
cost: $57 million
size: 194,000 square feet, eight stories

materials
architectural woodworking: laynecorp architectural millwork
building management system: johnson controls
cabinetmaking: laynecorp architectural millwork
ceilings: eurostone, woodceilings
doors: ceco, door hardware: sargent, hager
drywall: usg
elevators: kone
energy efficiency, controls: wattstopper, lutron
fire safety: simplex grinnell
flooring: new mexico travertine, kaswell & company mesquite wood flooring, tarkett linoleum, and interface ar access flooring; carpet/carpet tile: interface; carpet fiber: dupont antron lumena; carpet backing: glasbac tile / nexstep tile
glass: viracon, pilkington, old castle
hvac: york, temtrol, titus
masonry: east texas brick, ryder brick, inc., scp
metals: proclad (metal panels)
paint: sherwin williams
planters, accessories: magnuson group, wiremold, peter pepper
plumbing fixtures: sloan optima, t&s brass & bronze works, inc., waterless co. no-flush urinal sonora
principal furnishings: abco, bernhardt, brayton, danko, franklin fixtures, geiger, global, clinton, haworth, herman miller, invacare, kc booth manufacturers, keilhauer, ki, landscape forms, metro furniture, nevins, offi, peter pepper, richard wilcox, ritter, sandback, style garage, volker, and zero
railings: myrex industries, skyline designs
roofing: metal: proclad; built up: carlisle syntec (membrane roofing); american hydrotech (garden roof)
sailcloth shading devices: birdair
seating upholstery: designtex, carnegie
signage: identity essentials
skylights and metal/glass curtain wall: vistawall
stone flooring: new mexico travertine, inc.
stone: san jacinto materials (stone cladding)
wallcoverings: phoenix biocomposites agrifiber panels
window frames: raco, st. cloud
window treatments: mechoshade, levolor

project team
architect: bnim architects in collaboration with lake/flato architects. designers: steve mcdowell, faia & david lake, faia
interior designer: bnim architects, david immenschuh, fiida
structural engineer: jaster-quintanilla & associates
mechanical and plumbing engineer: carter & burgess, inc.
energy strategies: supersymmetry
electrical engineer: carter & burgess, inc.
electrical consultant: ferguson consulting, inc.
general contractor and construction manager: jacobs/vaughn, inc. (jacobs facilities, inc. and vaughn construction)
lighting designer: clanton associates
acoustician: pelton, marsh, kinsella (pmk)
sustainable strategies: bnim elements, center for maximum potential building systems, rocky mountain institute

Awards...

2004 American Institute of Architects (AIA) Awards:

• Honor Award, AIA Kansas
• Honor Award, AIA Kansas City
• Honor Award for Excellence in Sustainable Design, AIA Kansas City COTE
• Merit Award, AIA Central States
• Merit Award, AIA San Antonio

2005 AIA Awards:

• Honor Award, AIA Houston
• Honor Award in Sustainable Design, AIA Houston