Children's Hospital reveals dazzling vision
New hospital at Fitzsimons features flair for the dramatic
Rachel Brand, Rocky Mountain News
Published October 13, 2006 at midnight
How do you design a hospital just for children?
Dramatically.
And from everything revealed on a tour Thursday, visitors will be dazzled.
Go through the front doors, and you'll enter a four-floor, Olympic swimming pool-sized atrium. The floor swims up to you, a blue sea of terrazzo tile. You will be walking on what seems like a giant painting of birds, insects, snowflakes and butterflies.
Your path is a red tile ribbon, twisting and turning until it reaches the glass elevators. Get in, and you're surrounded by walls of etched aspen trees.
Designing a children's hospital, "you get to explore everything - furniture, fabrics. You get to be more creative," said interior architect Robert G. Packard of Zimmer-Gunsul-Frasca Partnership of Portland, Ore.
"It's not just an adult hospital with smaller furniture," added architect Michael Ossian, with H+L Architecture.
"You're working with people at the beginning of their lives, trying to get them off to the best start possible."
The new hospital campus, estimated to cost about $540 million, will open in October 2007.
It increases the size of Children's Hospital by 73 percent, adding state-of-the-art technology and more private rooms.
The Children's Hospital Foundation has raised $216 million toward a goal of $250 million to help pay for the new facility. The rest will be financed through bonds and working capital.
OLD BUILDING NEW BUILDING
Location Central Denver East Colfax Avenue and I-225 in Aurora
Size of campus 14.25 acres 48 acres
Size of hospital 751,000 square feet 1.44 million square feet
Beds 240 270
Emergency room 29 beds 49 beds
E.R. capacity 45,000 visits/year 80,000 visits/year
Neonatal ICU 50 beds 60 beds (30 private, 30 semiprivate)
• Coolest thing in the old building: The ball machine, art that resembles a giant game of Mousetrap.
• Coolest thing in the new building: Terrazzo tile atrium and wall of colored glass tile. Ball machine will be there, too.
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