Cambridge Hospital
Cambridge, Mass.
Payette Associates Inc.

An outmoded hospital becomes a new home for integrated patient care

© Woodruff/Brown

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The Cambridge Hospital was a traditional inpatient hospital with its last major update in the 1970s. The growth in programs for ambulatory care, teaching and research, outreach to community health, and the need for the integration of those programs to an expanded community network were a mismatch with the infrastructure of the existing facilities. The Cambridge Health Alliance undertook the project of updating the facilities with the goal of reinterpreting the traditional city hospital—they called the result the Center for Community Health.

The focus of the programs was shifted from inpatient care to one that is fully centered on ambulatory care and emergency services. These changes translated physically into reorienting the entrance and circulation to a high volume interface with outpatient facilities and changing the scale of the original buildings, which towered over the adjacent residences, to a scale that knits the building into the neighborhood.

The simplicity of the new circulation spine along the exterior frontage of the new facilities orients the patients and celebrates the interface of the hospital with the community. The transparency of the experience, from waiting room, to corridor, to arrival, to neighborhood, provides clarity to the path and a symbolic openness to the community. This orientation to natural light, use of wood, and earth tones for interior finishes, all help to create a warm and inviting environment for patients.

A private practice, personal physician–based approach is brought to the clinic’s ambulatory departments, achieved at the interface of reception and waiting rooms. This is combined with exam clusters supporting the clinical practices, providing efficiency of space utilization with dynamic scheduling of exam facilities. These programs share the diagnostic infrastructure of the inpatient care facilities that are the backbone of the system. Diagnostic departments have new points of interface with the outpatients for surgery, lab, and imaging.

Formal name of Project:
Cambridge Hospital
Renewal and Expansion as a Center for Community Health (REACH)

Location:
Cambridge, Mass.

Gross square footage:
118,000 sq. ft.

Total construction cost:
$41.3 million

Owner:
Cambridge Health Alliance
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Architect:
Payette Associates Inc.
285 Summer Street
Boston, MA 02210-1522
T 617.895.1000
F 617.895.1002
www.payette.com

Warner + Associates, Inc.
192 Sourth Street
Boston, MA 02111
T 617.482.6686
F 617.482.8372