Nebraska Medicine Bellevue

Nebraska Medicine Bellevue - hero

Nebraska Medicine Bellevue

Designed with Community Top of Mind

This warm and welcoming facility incorporates a modern vocabulary comprising local vernacular, rectilinear shapes made of natural materials — stone, wood, metal and glass. These simple, linear forms tie the building to the surrounding landscape of plains, highway and functional, unadorned structures. The overarching vision for the hospital is community with the understanding that it is the community that nurtures and heals.

The hospital is organized into linear horizontal “wings” with a patient tower above. The first three floors (Garden Level, Level One — the main entrance level — and Level Two) house amenities such as conference rooms and a café, as well as diagnostic, procedure and treatment facilities. The tower (Levels Three and Four) house patient care services. The adjacent three-story medical office building houses doctors’ offices and patient clinics.

The project’s unique features include:

  • Rectilinear massing and use of common building materials respect and complement the local vernacular without mimicking it. Two masses composed of horizontal linear “bars” of ipe wood and zinc cladding float above an anchoring limestone base. Bands of glass fenestration reinforce the horizontal massing.
  • A transparent glass two-story entrance piece connects while visually separating the hospital and medical office building masses.
  • These horizontal bars seem to lift the structure, evoking wings as they give loft to a plane.
  • Patient rooms and waiting areas employ a balanced color palette of muted blues and greens, warm gold and chocolate brown wood tones, and ivory linens. Carpet patterns are abstracted from nature, and glass along patient room corridors is etched with a grass motif.
  • Reduced energy consumption and water conservation make the hospital 20 percent more energy efficient than a conventional hospital.

The objective of the site design was to bring the site back as close as possible to its native state, a mid-grass prairie, rather than a more contemporary approach. To accomplish this, the entire site was seeded with a native grass mix, a mid-height grass indigenous to the area, and tree species selected were either native or adaptive to the region. The building rests lightly on the 22-acre plain without disrupting the surrounding native wetlands.

Nebraska Medicine Bellevue - hero
Client
Nebraska Medicine
Location

Bellevue, NE
United States

Size
Hospital: 266,000 SF (24,712 m²) Medical Office Building: 60,000 SF (5,574 m²)
Certifications
LEED Certified
Subservices