Tasked to create “a hospital that has never before been seen or imagined,” SOM worked with Emory Healthcare to design a facility that will reinvent cancer care. The facility will bring more than 450,000 square feet of inpatient, outpatient, and research facilities to the existing Emory University Hospital Midtown campus and Winship Cancer Institute—which is currently the only National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in the state of Georgia.

Through a highly collaborative process involving healthcare executives, clinicians, patient family advisors, builders, and expert consultants, the team has developed a new paradigm for hospital design. The facility is organized around two-story, disease-centered “care communities.” Within these, services normally distributed throughout a hospital are organized into one-stop destinations that combine exam, consultation, infusion, and supportive functions—resulting in a series of intimate communities that are tailored to the journey of each patient.

The building will house comprehensive oncology facilities including inpatient beds, surgical capacity, infusion treatment, outpatient clinics, diagnostic imaging, linear accelerators, and areas for wellness, rehabilitation, and clinical research. The project will also enable Winship Cancer Institute to build and sustain its distinctive cancer programs through recruitment, retention, engagement, and development of faculty, staff, and trainees.

Winship at Midtown is enhanced by a range of amenities, beginning with a dignified arrival court with valet service. The facility includes a retail boutique and pharmacy, a wellness center, a retail café, and multipurpose spaces for yoga, music, and art. The lower roof is home to an elevated garden—a place for respite as well as for dining and events.

The duplex care communities informed SOM’s design of the exterior, which is expressed in two-story facade increments that give the facility an approachable scale on Atlanta’s iconic Peachtree Street. At the two-story patient and staff lounges that bracket the ends of each care community, elegant wooden ceilings and walls introduce a warmth that contrasts with the building’s taut, high-performance glass facades. Reflecting Emory’s commitment to a new level of community engagement, the building will meet Peachtree Street with a transparent storefront, a welcoming lobby, and retail—seamlessly integrating the health facility with the public realm, and reconsidering how an urban medical center relates to its neighborhood.

The facility features a high-performance facade with optimized glazing and window-wall ratios, as well as efficient mechanical systems such as energy-efficient recovery mechanical equipment with chilled beams and direct-outside air units. Water efficiency and storm water management were also prioritized in the building’s design. Within the building, patients’ recovery is supported by daylight, views, and thermal comfort—elements that will grant Winship at Midtown a high Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ). Together, these sustainable design features put the building on track for LEED® Silver certification, as well as an ambitious 130 Energy Use Intensity (EUI)—a goal that very few hospitals have achieved. As a result, the building will expend almost 40 percent less energy annually than the average hospital in Atlanta.