Profile

Guggenheim Pavilion,
The Mount Sinai Medical Center Expansion & Modernization

New York, New York
Completed 1992

625-bed teaching hospital facility, providing a new main lobby and gateway into the full medical complex
 

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This 625-bed medical facility inaugurated a massive reconstruction and renovation campaign aimed at positioning Mount Sinai among the top teaching hospitals in the United States. The goal of this project was to improve access, security, ambience and circulation while consolidating facilities dispersed throughout the full medical complex.  The challenge was to satisfy these goals in functional, institutional, urban and above all, human terms. Guided by the conviction that a good environment aids healing, the building was designed to participate actively in the therapeutic process.

Decades of ad hoc expansion had left Mount Sinai a knot of corridors filled with undifferentiated traffic. In solution, access was improved and circulation rationalized by a new network of bridges, stairs and dedicated elevators that horizontally and vertically separate patients from materials transport and the comings and goings of the general public.  A new main entrance was created to convey a sense of arrival and also to achieve functional integration, leading to a skylit plaza and thereby connecting nearly 70% of the entire hospital complex at ground floor for the first time.

Guggenheim Pavilion occupies a full city block.  It rises from a rectangular base designed for easy access to a greatly enlarged emergency room, health clinics and other public services. State-of-the-art operating suites and major medical areas are located above on large (2-acre) floors that provide maximum flexibility.

Patients are housed in three linked towers on the five uppermost floors, raised above city noise and bustle. The towers are angled to provide each room with an atrium or outdoor view in order to engage the patient's imagination beyond the room's edge and thereby promote a sense of wellness rather than illness. 

Major Components

12,000 s/f atrium lobby; 8,400 s/f atrium plaza; 5,100 s/f patient atrium (on floors 7–11); 192 two-bed rooms; 175 single-bed rooms; 66 ICU beds; 22 operating rooms/support (47,000 s/f); 15,000 s/f Emergency Room; 16,000 s/f cafeteria; coffee shop; 194-seat auditorium; chapel, synagogue, support

Awards

I. M. Pei & Partners services

Master Planning; Architectural Design; Interior Design of public spaces; coordination with associate architect on construction documents and construction administration

Associate Architects

Ellerbe Architects & Engineers, New York, NY

Structural

Weiskopf & Pickworth, New York, NY   

Mechanical / Electrical

Syska and Hennessy, New York, NY

Programming

Ellerbe Associates, Inc., Bloomington, MN

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