Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center

This medical center is designed to withstand an 8.0-plus magnitude earthquake.

The new, 1.2 million square-foot, eight-story Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, incorporating the Mattel Children's Hospital and the Stewart and Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, is a state-of-the-art facility with a humanizing and uplifting environment.

This is the first major replacement hospital built after the 1994 Northridge earthquake designed to meet the new stringent seismic codes. The hospital can withstand an 8.0-plus magnitude earthquake, particularly noteworthy considering the building’s three million pounds of travertine cladding and 80,000 square-feet of windows.

The design incorporates three, quarter-round towers emerging from a central core, breaking up the building’s mass to create the intimacy of smaller hospitals. This required a space-efficient concentration of services, accomplished by clustering related activities on a single floor or stacking them in vertical cores. The towers are staggered to open up views and allow light to enter from all sides. Clear wayfinding is achieved through easily identifiable landmarks visible from both interior and exterior locations, while major indoor public spaces feature significant daylighting and views, and access to outdoor terraces.  

Natural light flows in the large windows of the 525 private patient rooms. The rooms are comfortably sized, and feature daybeds in visitor’s nooks to make a patient’s stay pleasant for families and visitors alike. Further enhancing the experience, patient rooms are equipped with everything necessary to ramp-up or dial-down care as needed, allowing for multiple care levels without transporting patients to other settings.  

Technology is central to and deeply woven into the project’s DNA. The second floor is dedicated to interventional procedures, consolidating surgery, cardiac catheterization, interventional radiology, and preparation and recovery functions.  Twenty-three operating rooms are collocated with interventional rooms and share a common infrastructure, enabling conversion of operating rooms into interventional rooms to accommodate future needs.

The Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, located on the fourth floor, provides psychiatric services in a soothing environment. Patient rooms include abundant daylight and views, with an outdoor terrace offering spectacular ocean views, and fresh air. The Mattel Children’s Hospital on the fifth floor addresses the needs of pediatric patients and families in a cheerful, less intimidating way.  A dedicated entrance on the first floor greets patients and visitors with a 60-foot-long multimedia “Welcome Wall” where kids’ own images are projected, creating a rare sense of belonging and personalized care. Age-appropriate playrooms for toddlers to teens, and a family resource room extend to a large terrace where outdoor landscapes promote healing and rest.

Formal name of project: Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center

Location:
757 Westwood Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Gross square footage: 1,200,000 sq.ft.

Total construction cost: $529 million

Completion Date: June 2008

Owner:
University of California, Los Angeles

Architects:
Perkins+Will
617 West Seventh Street, Suite 1200
Los Angeles, CA 90017
Tel:  (213) 270-8400
Fax:  (213) 270-8410

And

Pei Partnership Architects LLP
257 Park Avenue South
New York, NY 10010-7304
Tel: (212) 674-9000
Fax: (212) 674-5900
www.peipartnership.com

Consulting Architect:
RBB Architects Inc.
10980 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90024
T: 310-473-3555
www.rbbinc.com

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