SmithGroup Emory University Hospital Concourses

Growth is good, but it rarely comes without challenges. For this urban hospital, the challenge was distributed growth. Over the years, expansion manifested in new individual buildings. As the hospital prepared to expand again, it needed a way to elegantly stitch together the 5 individual existing buildings and a new builidng across roads, sidewalks, and parking lots. Further complications included the need to allow the bridges to widen at more frequently used paths and narrow for efficiency at less frequently trafficked areas. Development and execution of the design in a virtual environment was critical. Utilizing GPS extracted data, the design team constructed the medical campus in a digital environment then began to connect the dots. The result was a concourse system of varying widths that aligned with differing floor elevations and building orientations in order to visually and literally connect the medical campus.