Yale Health Center

Yale Health Center

The combination of the three buildings on the block, Rose Center / University Police, the Yale Health Center and structured parking, along with site structures and landscape elements create a reinterpretation of the traditional, interiorized Yale campus block. This configuration allows not only pedestrian but also automobile passage easily into and through the site, a thoroughly contemporary campus block condition. As with the traditional block, building entries are located internal to the block.

In placing the Yale Health Center building on the southeast portion of the block, it is possible for the building plan to take on a triangular shape. This shape provides a generous perimeter wall to floor area ratio, a condition favorable to maximizing daylight into the building interior. The triangular plan shape with a centralized vertical transportation core is extremely compact and efficient. In addition to the perimeter walls, daylight and views are introduced by deep horizontal cuts into the plan and by vertical light wells.

Like the site, the building circulation progresses from public to more and more private conditions. This happens both vertically and horizontally. Level One, the ground level, houses urgent care, internal medicine, retail pharmacy, member services, medical education and the common lobby with visitor and staff dining. Upper levels house the clinics, inpatient care and administration. Horizontally, the clinic entrances are accessed off public corridors radiating from the centralized elevator core. Separate clinic entrances open onto reception areas that then give access to exam and treatment rooms. At Level Four, a roof terrace provides a place of respite. The irregular configuration of the radiating tentacular corridors resists the effects of the institutional corridor and lends a sense of privacy to patients finding their individual, personal destinations. The radiating corridors move patients toward daylight and views to the exterior.

The building form, with its soft edges in both plan and section, is in the spirit of Eero Saarinen’s architecture at both the Ingalls Rink and Stiles and Morse Colleges. The eased forms address a sensuous, less institutional impulse. The building plan shape is further softened by the application of an irregular and undulating perimeter of shading devices and privacy screens and by the indication of certain exterior walls.

The Yale Health Center contains sustainable measures for many aspects of the building. Building materials, indoor environmental quality, and energy use have all been addressed with a strong emphasis on green design. Much care has been taken in the envelope design with optimal insulating characteristics, daylight access, and use of green materials, along with aesthetic and massing considerations. Non-toxic finishes and building materials such as paint, composite wood and adhesives are used exclusively. The building is served by a filtered 100% fresh air ventilation system that improves the air quality in all spaces. Energy efficient building system measures analyzed and recommended include chilled beams, heat recovery and an electric lighting system with low lighting power densities. The project has received LEED Gold certification.