Monument Health – Rapid City Hospital, 2021 Citation Award
Monument Health – Rapid City Regional Hospital was recognized with an AIA Middle Tennessee 2021 Citation Award and the People’s Choice Award. The AIA Design Awards Program strives to recognize, publicize, and celebrate projects that represent the best of Middle Tennessee architecture; projects that are exemplary for their thoughtful, sustainable, innovative, and well-crafted design. With juries composed of highly-qualified professionals offering diverse perspectives and expertise, all submissions are reviewed in the context of the project team’s goals and evaluated for thoughtfully designed resolution of those goals.
Jury Comment: Through master planning and design, the Rapid City Hospital was transformed and rebranded for efficiencies and advanced delivery of care, while reinvesting in local community.
ESa provided master planning and design services to transform the Monument Health Rapid City Hospital campus. Expansion goals included the addition of patient beds to transition to all private rooms, connected parking, improved wayfinding and the addition of integrated physician spaces. As part of the largest construction project in the healthcare system’s history, the client also desired to rebrand and reinvest in the local community.
“The new construction and design truly capture the essence of the Black Hills region and they are woven into so many elements of this transformational campus redesign,” said Dave Ellenbecker, Vice President of Facilities Management and Plant Operations at Monument Health. “The look and feel of our new spaces have been exceptionally received by our patients, visitors, physicians and caregivers. This space provides a great first impression; it’s then up to us to follow it up with high-quality care.”
Phased improvements at the existing campus included 260,000-square-feet of additions and renovations and a new integrated 80,000-squarefoot, four-story hospital office building. Culture-based design aesthetic emphasizing tradition and art is incorporated into the design to acknowledge the 30% of the patient population who is Native American. Strategic design choices, such as the textured stone wall spanning the atrium, the colored glass wrapping the main lobby (which is a high resolution image of The Black Hills Mountains) and wood slat ceilings, integrate the building’s exterior and interior while establishing a peaceful color palette for branding purposes. An integrated patient arrival. Focus groups with caregivers, physicians and the community contributed to the clients’ rebranding efforts.
“Monument Health leadership saw Rapid City Hospital as the heartbeat of the community with the campus needing to be a destination place, not just a place to go when one is sick,” said Kevin Harney, ESa vice president and principal. “The architecture created a healing environment that connected with the community both culturally and physically through the creation of space and through the utilization of a natural material palette of textures and colors.”
Flipping the main entrance from the north to the south, the campus is reconfigured to better accommodate future growth. Providing registration and waiting areas at the main entrance, the atrium lobby offers improved wayfinding and connectivity to the new bed tower and the hospital office building. Adjacent to the lobby are gift shop and retail spaces and an integrated two-story parking structure that will provide patients and staff with convenient parking during inclement weather. Improvements include a newly relocated and expanded Emergency Department, new bed tower (adding a 32-bed Heart and Vascular patient care unit) and a Central Utility Plant expansion. The additions are designed for future interior build-out, vertical and horizontal expansion.
Since the master planning phase, ESa and other design team members partnered with the construction team to help determine cost-effective, realistic design solutions from the project’s onset.
A jury of AIA Westchester Hudson Valley members judged the entries. Projects are entered under six categories: small, large, healthcare design, interiors, residential, or unbuilt. The jury was encouraged to recognize and acknowledge exceptional design in the categories of Citation, Merit, and Honor, with Honor being the highest award.