Background
Project
New Pediatric Campus
Location
Dallas, Texas
Role
Architect / Designer
Year
2032
CONNECTING URBAN FABRICS
The New Pediatric Campus site is part of the Southwestern Medical District and is bordered by Harry Hines Boulevard, West Mockingbird Lane, Bomar Avenue and Southwestern Medical Park apartments. The site sits at a junction between the community and the SWMD campus providing an opportunity to be a community and campus stitch. It also is at a close proximity to the Dallas Love Field Airport. The surrounding context provides an important starting point for understanding the possibilities of place to guide a future vision. From the scale of the city to the district and the immediate site, the site’s unique qualities and characteristics provide opportunities to be a catalyst within the greater region and for the everyday human experience of place with resilient and responsible design strategies.
COMMUNE, EMBRACE AND ACTIVATE | FUTURE EDGE CONDITIONS
In the changing landscape, NPC inspires a mixed-use wellness neighborhood, catalyzing retail, housing and office on Mockingbird Lane, knitting the campus together on Forest Park Boulevard and serving as an iconic anchor on the Harry Hines green spine/district arterial.
Campus as a Catalyst
The New Pediatric Campus will define an innovative paradigm for the health and welling being for the surrounding community, the patients, families, visitors and staff it serves and be an exemplary model sustainable urban development. Integrating strategies across scales, the campus should address:
- the everyday human experience through appropriately scaled public spaces
- an experience that brings joy, wonder and wellness inside and out of the hospital walls
- the integrated flows of ecology and mobility
- catalyzing surrounding development towards a more mixed use walkable environment
- a healing ecosystem that restores natural water flows and local native species in public spaces
Campus as a Healing Agent
Beyond the walls of the hospital, the campus itself acts as an agent of healing. By extending the healing program of the building, the New Pediatric Campus is able to heal at different scales.
Patients & Families
Dozens of studies have demonstrated that being in nature has a positive impact on our mental and physical well-being. People who have large “does” of nature live longer and have a lower risk of developing cancer and respiratory illness. Nature can also provide ‘positive distraction’ for patients, especially through up-close encounters and wildlife spottings.
Caregivers & Staff
Outdoor spaces can be crucial for moments of recharge and respite from the demands of caregiving. Ample access to terraces and ground floor amenities of various types (ie social spaces vs solitary refuge) can support mental health.
Physical Site & Larger District
The Southwest Medical District is a major urban heat island with less that 7% tree canopy coverage (Texas Trees Foundation), and the NPC site includes a piece of a floodplain that drains into the Trinity River. The new hospital landscape design has the opportunity to restore biological function to the site and its soils; sequester carbon; cleanse stormwater and be a steward of the Trinity River Watershed; increase pollinator and bird habitat; and restore the urban forest in this concrete-plagued area of Dallas
