Levi + Wong Design Associates, Inc., [Concord, MA]
FACILITY TYPE: Rehabilitation
PROJECT CATEGORY: New Construction
CHIEF ADMINISTRATOR: Naomi Prendergast, CEO, (978) 569-1000
FIRM: Levi + Wong Design Associates, Inc., (978) 371-1945
DESIGN TEAM: R. Philip Dowds, AIA, Principal-in-Charge; Willie W. Wong, AIA, ASLA, LEED AP BD+C, Design Principal and Landscape Architecture; Thomas C. Levi, AIA, Design Review and Managing Principal; Neil P. Harrigan, AIA, Project Manager; Mary O'Looney, ASID, IIDA, EDAC, LEED AP BD+C, Interior Designer
PHOTOGRAPHY: © Warren Patterson Photography
Total Area (Sq. Ft.): 52,000
TOTAL CONSTRUCTION COST (EXCLUDING LAND): $11,000,000
CONSTRUCTION COST/SQ. FT.: $205
COMPLETION: February 2012
To meet growing community needs,evolving senior care requirements and recent market trends, D’Youville Life and Wellness Community recently opened an integrated two-story physical rehabilitative center that represents a new paradigm for rehabilitative services in New England. The new Center brings together the D’Youville Centerf or Advanced Therapy, providing short-term transitional physical rehabilitative and hospice care services, and the New England Rehabilitation Hospital Satellite at Lowell, providing short-term acute-care physical rehabilitative services. This unique clinical combination will serve multiple levels of acuity and ages.
The design is based on our firm’s approach to “Patient-Centered Design – Redesigning the Patient Experience” and demonstrates how design reflects D’Youville’s provider mission to provide unique life-enhancing environments.
Levi + Wong Design’s philosophy is: “If a resident feels the positive connection to the built or landscape environment, the foundation is laid for a relationship of trust with caregivers. It is these associations of resident to the interior and building to its community that creates a healing environment—or Patient-Centered Environment—to Inspire, Serve and Advocate.”
The Center’s prominent hillside location highlights the integral role that rehabilitation plays in the healing process. A carefully orchestrated arrival sequence guides the approaching visitor past active therapy spaces, up a gentle grade to a bold entry canopy silhouetted against the raised roof of the Chapel beyond.
The palette of materials (cut stone, maple wall panels and glass) is deployed to create a noninstitutional, New England-style interpretation of modernism, clean and light, reflecting the hopeful nature of the therapy within. The massing is articulated as a series of implied pavilions with open glazed corners that emphasize continuity between interior and exterior.
A spacious, light-filled Entry Lobby features an open stair that leads down to the New England Rehabilitation Hospital Satellite program and is bracketed by active and quiet spaces that comprise the Center’s public realm.
Situated nearby are activity areas, a nondenominational chapel and a quiet courtyard terrace that provides a sheltered spot for meditation.
Spacious patient rooms feature large windows, built-in personal storage, lockable equipment storage,and a refined color palette. The transitional care unit features a mix of private, semi-private and bariatric for a variety of therapeutic care.
A large Patient Toilet/Shower Room is included in every Patient Room to promote staff assistance and patient independence.
More than a connecting link from Patient Room to therapy space, the brightly lit and generous 9'-6" wide and up to 9' tall, corridor becomes an attractive path to common activity areas; for rehabilitative patients, the journey is as important as the destination.
The state-of-the-art rehabilitative therapy environment uses patient-centered care and evidence-based design models to facilitate patient recovery, caregiver assistance and family involvement while highlighting contemporary, rehabilitative and hospitality design aesthetics and amenities. Therapy spaces address the street to broadcast hope and healing to the community.
