Massive Dallas Hospital Replacement Connects with the City

The New Parkland Hospital is a $1.27 billion healthcare facility replacing the existing Parkland Memorial Hospital built in 1954. In a joint effort with Corgan, we led the design for a master plan of a new 64-acre healthcare campus, as well as for the 862-bed full-service acute care replacement hospital. The Parkland campus is located within the Southwestern Medical District and serves as a teaching hospital for the University of Texas Southwestern (UTSW) School of Medicine.

Key features of Parkland Hospital include:

• From its inception, the design for the New Parkland Hospital has been distinctly about this medical center’s relevance in connecting to the city’s urban fabric and importance as a civic anchor.
• The combination of its physical relationship to multiple modes of public transportation and the incorporation of “linear parks” as major design elements for orientation and navigation established a strong developmental framework for the overall conceptual development.
• The building massing, while iconic, is an honest expression of Parkland’s healthcare program and operational requirements.
• The simple yet dynamic bars of the WISH and acute care bed towers were designed around a universal private patient room. The building size requires units be placed into clusters organized in communities that are centered on the patient and staff lifts.
• The contextual relationship of the building to the modern Dallas skyline led to the use of a low-iron glass curtain wall system that uses dot frit patterns to create a distinctive gradient on the bed towers.
• The base is defined by a tree graphic that at a distance transforms from a dense summer canopy on the western façade to a delicate branch pattern that covers the south-facing lobby. At closer inspection the tree graphic is created by the names of donors who contributed to this public building.