Baylor Outpatient Cancer Center

Perkins+Will

Program: A 10-story, 467,000-square-foot outpatient cancer center with spaces for radiation and medical oncology, a laboratory, a pharmacy, a restaurant, a coffee shop, a gift shop, and physician offices. The top floor is home to a 14,000-square-foot conference center with a 200-person auditorium serving the whole hospital campus. The cancer center was formerly housed across the street in two towers, which are now used for inpatient services and research, respectively. The center anchors an updated, more coherent plan for the medical campus's southern end, which has become a second entrance with the recent addition of a Dallas Area Rapid Transit station and a road extending to Interstate 30.
Design concept and solution: Adopting a semicircular plan for the concrete structure, the architects conceived it as a hard outer shell encircling a soft atrium space. The outside of the semicircle, facing the highway, is shaped by a series of concentric rings clad in glass, metal panels, and solar screens, which together form a shiny, metallic skin representing the high-tech aspects of Baylor's treatment program. On the other side of the building, where patients enter, surfaces of warmer-hued cement and limestone emphasize the embracing curve of the inside of the semicircle, which opens into a light-filled double-height atrium. The architects chose a warm interior palette favoring local materials: limestone flooring, limestone wall panels with wood accents, and dark wood finishes in the dining room. To integrate the center with its neighbors, Perkins+Will extended the curve of the building to form a crescent-shaped bridge that leads to the inpatient center, the research building, and a parking garage across the way. This circular plan defines a new plaza that serves as a gateway to the south side of the campus.

Total construction cost: $127 million
Architect:
Perkins+Will
10100 North Central Expressway, Suite 300
Dallas, Texas 75231
214.283.8700 (phone)
214.283.8701 (fax)

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