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Home > Building Project > Architecture Mirrors Surrounding Neighborhood, City
Architecture Mirrors Surrounding Neighborhood, City
Linda T. Mellowes,
Former Chairwoman
of the Board of Directors
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“Our hospitals have been around for a long time, serving generations of Milwaukee-area families. And now, it is such an exciting time to be involved in a new project – to take advantage of advanced te chnology and our knowledge about healing. This is all to better serve our patients and our community, assuring that we will be able to sustain our mission for a long time to come.”
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The Columbia St. Mary's Hospital Milwaukee will be a significant piece of architecture in the urban fabric of Milwaukee due to its size and prominent location along the shores of Lake Michigan. The building has been designed to blend in with the surrounding historic neighborhood, while also serving as a prominent landmark for the City of Milwaukee.
The hospital building is a composition of smaller elements that express the various departments and units within the facility. Architectural features of the main hospital include an exceptional glass structure, which serves to create a backdrop for the new cardiac, cancer, musculoskeletal and women's institutes. The institutes, or specialty centers, will be constructed in contrast with masonry materials. A transparent concourse will run along the base of the building to help with way finding. Patients and visitors will be able to easily identify from the street, and within the building, where they are on the hospital campus.
The architectural glass structure is an elegant wall of light colored metal and tinted glass that bends and reaches out toward the lake. A transparent glass solarium is the feature element at the end of the structure that looks out to the lake and marks the main entry below.
Masonry materials that will used are similar in size and scope to the historic East Facility facing the Water Tower. These structures will have windows that relate to the scale of the surrounding residential neighborhood and the patient rooms they serve. The masonry will be a very light color that will contrast with the blue sky, yet still contain the warmth of a natural material.
The hospital concourse is a gracious open space located at the street level. It will be a transparent glass wall that reveals the public circulation within the hospital and allows visitors and patients to continually orient themselves with views to the exterior.
The space around the building will be treated as an extension of Water Tower Park. A green space at the corner of Lake Drive and North Avenue will serve as a foreground to the lobby beyond. The main entry is surrounded with green space providing a welcoming entry to the building.
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