City of Hope\u2019s main campus in Duarte, Calif., near Los Angeles, has expanded significantly since it opened there in 1913, growing into one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the U.S.<\/p>\n
But patients in Orange County, Calif., about 50 miles south of the flagship treatment center, were commuting at least an hour each way (sometimes two, depending on traffic). To address this, the organization wanted to bring cancer care<\/a> closer to Orange County\u2019s 3.2 million residents and better serve that growing segment of its patient population.<\/p>\n So it set out to build a new centrally located outpatient cancer center in Irvine, Calif., one of the largest and fastest-growing cities in the county.<\/p>\n City of Hope<\/a> identified an existing four-story commercial office building as the ideal site for the project. Then it hired architecture firm ZGF<\/a> (Los Angeles) for master planning and design.<\/p>\n \u201cConverting an office building into a cancer treatment center comes with its own challenges,\u201d says James Woolum, partner at ZGF and lead interior designer for the project. \u201cOffice buildings are not generally built with the floor-to-floor height that we need for medical equipment.\u201d<\/p>\n Situated on 11 acres in Irvine\u2019s FivePoint Gateway Campus office park, the project also needed to connect to an adjacent specialty inpatient cancer hospital that City of Hope is constructing next door, scheduled to open in 2025.<\/p>\n In addition to the existing challenges of a building conversion, the project team also had to plan future connections and adjacencies with the neighboring specialty hospital. So the design team pulled inspiration from the surrounding landscape and hospitality environments to create a calming space for healing and hope.<\/p>\n Guided by this vision, the City of Hope Orange County Lennar Foundation Cancer Center<\/a> opened in Irvine in August 2022.<\/p>\n Spanning 188,000 square feet, the four-level outpatient clinic was designed to deliver comprehensive lifesaving treatments. Services range from screening and diagnosis to radiation oncology and infusion therapy, in one convenient location.<\/p>\n \u201cThis clinic has all the program components you\u2019d normally see in a hospital,\u201d says Janet Pangman, principal at ZGF<\/a> and lead medical planner for the project. \u201cThat put more pressure on the existing office building than you typically see in a renovation like this.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the biggest challenges was fitting huge, heavy medical equipment into spaces designed to hold cubicles and computers. The operating rooms (ORs) in the second-floor ambulatory surgery center posed the biggest height hurdles.<\/p>\n \u201cORs have a lot of complexity above the ceiling, including all the supports for booms, lights, and mechanical components,\u201d Pangman explains. \u201cTo compress that down, we utilized a modular, integrated system that was prefabricated. It includes all the necessary equipment supports, laminar airflow devices, and lighting, to fit everything above the ceiling like a Swiss army knife.\u201d<\/p>\n The original office structure was not designed to support the weight or vibration of medical equipment, either. Overcoming this constraint required upgrades of additional structural beams added to every floor to mitigate vibrations.<\/p>\n Diagnostic imaging and radiation oncology are oriented on the ground floor to support the heaviest equipment, like MRI scanners. Lighter-weight imaging equipment, like PET-CT and SPECT-CT scanners, is located in the nuclear medicine department on the second floor. Here, tube steel columns were added to support the additional weight of the equipment.<\/p>\n Additionally, the hybrid interventional radiology OR houses heavy scanners and complex surgical equipment. To accommodate the equipment, the design team filled in an existing open stair that connected the first and second floors to build the slab to spec.<\/p>\n \u201cThe stairs took up a lot of valuable square footage on both floors that City of Hope needed for patient care space,\u201d Pangman says. \u201cWe had to fill that hole in anyway, so by locating the hybrid interventional suite there, we could build the structural requirements we needed.\u201d<\/p>\n City of Hope engaged ZGF for campus-wide master planning. This included design of the cancer center in addition to programming and partial design development bridging documents for the adjacent hospital. Then another design-build team took over while ZGF focused on the clinic.<\/p>\n Planning the facilities simultaneously ensured seamless integration allowing the hospital and cancer center to connect at every level. This set up would also optimize staff efficiencies while creating a smooth experience for patients.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the services in the cancer center support the hospital, so it requires connectivity between the buildings,\u201d Pangman says. \u201cWe had to look at the patient flow to put those connections and adjacencies where they needed to be.\u201d<\/p>\n For example, the ambulatory surgery center on the second floor of the outpatient cancer building sits directly next to the future hospital\u2019s inpatient surgery department. The layout allows surgical staff to easily cross between facilities.<\/p>\n Additionally, many of the support services typically found in hospitals\u2014such as the pharmacy, imaging department, and automated clinical lab\u2014were redistributed to the cancer center and sized to support both buildings.<\/p>\n On the upper floors, carefully planned connections between buildings allow private patient transport through a back-of-house corridor.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had to add a gurney-sized elevator with access to each floor of the outpatient cancer center,\u201d Pangman says, \u201cso patients can come straight from the hospital and drop into diagnostic imaging without going through any public corridors or lobbies.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, public-facing services are located along the main corridor on the first floor of the cancer center. This set-up enables patients from both facilities to easily access the retail pharmacy, Hope Caf\u00e9, and a patient and family resource center, which offers support programs for care navigation, survivorship, counseling, and more.<\/p>\n One of the core design principles, Woolum says, was \u201cusing the building to its best advantage.\u201d Harnessing views, natural light, and other elements were among the strategies to create a calming, healing space for cancer patients.<\/p>\n Surrounded by park-like landscaping with views of Saddleback Mountain, the cancer center\u2019s Orange County location offered plenty of inspiration from nature. Additionally, the existing building already had floor-to-ceiling windows to capture the scenic views while letting in natural light.<\/p>\n ZGF strategically placed infusion bays along the north-facing windows on the top floor. This offers the best views to patients who\u2019d be coming several times a week, if not daily, to receive infusion treatments, which can last several hours each.<\/p>\n Frosted glass partitions and slatted wood doors enclose each infusion bay. The design features offer some privacy while maintaining a clear line of sight from the nurses\u2019 stations located in the interior of the floorplate.<\/p>\n The site\u2019s natural elements also inspired the color palettes and finishes inside the cancer center. Soothing blues and earthy tones from the surrounding landscape offer connections to nature. They also serve as color-coded wayfinding cues to help patients navigate the building.<\/p>\n \u201cDifferent areas of the building were zoned for different materials and natural elements native to the region, and we tied our color palette into that,\u201d Pangman says.<\/p>\nConverting cubicles into clinics<\/h2>\n
Adding building structural supports<\/h2>\n
Seamless integration between cancer clinic and hospital<\/h2>\n
Bringing the outdoors into the cancer clinic<\/h2>\n
Interior design strategy for cancer care<\/h2>\n