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By Alan Joch

One example of how new technologies make overengineering necessary is the trend toward using digital diagnostic images. By law, existing hospitals must store X-ray film for more than a dozen years, but as filmless digital X-ray machines become commonplace, storage needs will gradually decline. The Mayo Clinic decided to upgrade the areas that would be emptied of X-ray archives to meet power, loading, and vibration tolerances required by MRI and CAT scan machines—or other, unknown medical technologies—which would allow the facility to use high-tech medical equipment anywhere in the future.

Flexibility also affected the design of the interior spaces, says Mark Shoemaker, AIA, associate principle for Cesar Pelli & Associates of New Haven, who participated in the project. “MRI [machines] are getting smaller. We design smaller inserts within the facade to allow units we placed in the building today to be traded [for smaller ones] later. The curtain wall was designed to allow panels to be removed easily,” he says.

Designers also had to accommodate the growing need for rooms dedicated to computers and communications equipment. The Gonda Building has rooms of approximately 200 square feet on every floor to house data and telephone network equipment. The rooms are stacked above each other on each floor to provide for direct communications connection throughout the facility.

As the Gonda Building approaches full occupancy, the Mayo Clinic hopes it will have a facility that will serve patients through the next century. “Not too many institutions look for that kind of sustainability,” Zugates says. “But the philosophy was that if we build in flexibility today, it will be less expensive to make the changes we know we’ll have to make over the life of the building.”

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