The David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

The David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center: A Case Study

New York, NY

New York City’s preeminent cancer center creates a new model for 21st century cancer care.

Despite advances in treatment, earlier detection, changing lifestyles, and more, cancer remains one of the world’s most elusive health problems. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), the world’s oldest and largest private cancer center, utilizes architecture and design as a disruptive partner in its 135-year fight against it.

The David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is the latest chapter in Perkins Eastman’s 25-year history with MSK. This healing community uses the whole building as an active participant in a patient’s care, with the goal to reduce tensions and anxieties common to healthcare facilities in order to enhance patient outcomes.

Project Facts

  • Client:

  • Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
  • Associate Architect:

  • Ennead Architects
  • Size:

  • 730,000 sf
  • Sustainable Design:

  • LEED BD+C: Healthcare, Version v2009: LEED Gold
  • Markets:

  • Healthcare, Science + Technology
  • Region:

  • United States
  • Studios:

  • New York

    News

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    Awards

  • AIA/AAH Healthcare Design Award 2021
  • Lumen Award of Merit 2021, Illuminating Engineering Society NY Chapter
  • Healthcare, Best of Year Awards, Interior Design (2020)
  • Diamond Award, Building/Technology Systems, ACEC NY Engineering Excellence Award (2021)
  • Diamond Award, Structural Systems, ACEC NY Engineering Excellence Award (2021)
  • Transformation and Innovation Award, IIDA Healthcare Design Awards (2020)
  • Category Winner: Ambulatory-Cancer Center, IIDA Healthcare Design Awards (2020)
  • Honorable Mention: General Excellence, Fast Company Innovation By Design (2020)
  • Honorable Mention: Health, Fast Company Innovation By Design (2020)
  • Honorable Mention: Spaces and Places, Fast Company Innovation By Design (2020)
  • Best Project: Health Care, Regional Best Projects, ENR New York (2020)
  • Award of Merit, Design Showcase, Healthcare Design (2020)
  • Winner: Health + Wellness, NYCxDesign Awards (2020)
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    The David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center 3

    Located in Manhattan’s dense Upper East Side, the massing of this 25-floor building is broken into smaller volumes to reduce its scale to fit the adjacent neighborhood. The assemblage of the volumes represents various programmatic needs, scaled vertically from most public to more private. Setbacks animate the façade, allowing for a healing garden and green‐roofed terraces to benefit patients, caregivers, and staff with destinations and areas of respite. They also importantly maximize views and help to reduce the bulk of the building, the largest freestanding cancer center in New York City.

    The David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center 2 The David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center 1

     

     

    With a variety of vertical fin depths and window sizes deployed in various combinations based on programmatic needs and incident solar radiation, the building has a dynamic and responsive skin that meets the needs of occupants and program, while creating visual interest.

    Working collaboratively with MSK, the design team dared to dream about a new healthcare paradigm that departs from preconceived notions in order to create innovations in patient experience and treatment protocols.

    The David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center 12 The David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center 4

    Offering nearly every aspect of outpatient cancer care across many specialties, the center was designed to help restore patients’ health and well-being. This new model of care establishes a physical and operational armature for choices that align with a patient’s day-to-day feelings, resulting in a customized and supportive experience for patients undergoing episodic and long-term treatment, their families, and medical stakeholders. From the interior programming to the exterior expression to the variety of experiences within, the center deinstitutionalizes the hospital setting to create a truly better experience for all.

    This facility is home to the largest gathering of hematologic experts ever at MSK, including specialists in blood and marrow stem cell transplants, CAR T cell therapy, lymphoma, leukemia, multiple myeloma, and other blood cancers. While cancer care changes rapidly, the architecture and engineering infrastructure future-proofs the facility to ensure continuity of service and leading-edge innovation in cancer treatment.

    The meticulously planned and crafted interior environment not only supports coordinated care, but also breaks the traditional rules of ambulatory care experiences in order to encourage next-level innovation. Sitting above the diagnostic base, the clinical floors are arranged to support efficiencies among the many different service lines housed within this one building. Configured to feel and function like “neighborhoods” of smaller, more intimate physician practices, these floors enable collaboration, discussion, and research endeavors. For many patients, this means they can receive multiple services in a single visit, reducing their stress, waiting, and travel time; for clinicians, it means valuable face-to-face connections with colleagues in different specialties.

    The David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center 11 The David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center 10

    The timing of Superstorm Sandy relative to the design process enabled the team to ensure the flood mitigation and resiliency strategies designed into the project would adequately protect the facility against a future similar storm event. With this additional analysis, the project team incorporated strategies to protect the facility against a 500-year flood, including floodgates at every vulnerable entrance, above-flood elevation mechanical equipment, rooftop energy co-generation plant, and a 25,000-gallon basement-level fuel tank protected by a submarine-style entrance and exit. These strategies demonstrate how healthcare facilities in flood plains can plan for continuity of services for patients while also reducing energy consumption and enabling optimal efficiency.

    This LEED Gold-certified center incorporates additional design strategies to prioritize health and well-being, including access to natural environments, use of natural materials, and enhanced indoor environmental quality measures.

    The David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center The David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center 7

    Touchpoints that borrow from hospitality and unobtrusive technology are integrated throughout the facility, illustrating MSK’s commitment to provide a welcoming, healing environment that mitigates the stress and anxiety associated with cancer care to patients, caregivers, physicians, and staff. The hospitality-inspired inpatient and infusion floors are light-filled ecosystems of private, semiprivate, and communal spaces that recognize both patients’ and caregivers’ desires for control of their environment and offer a variety of choices for relaxation and rejuvenation.

    The design supports medical staff, as well, with goals to improve collaboration and provide space to attend to personal needs. Better situated conference rooms and gathering spaces enable nurses and doctors to work as an integrated team to more effectively serve a patient’s treatment plan.

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    “Through an expressive architecture, an artful arrangement of human-centered healing spaces, and a robust clinical and technology platform that uniquely accommodates both next-generation treatments and early-phase clinical trials, The David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is a game-changing healing community. This wonderful building allowed us to take everything we have learned in our 25 years of work for MSK to the next level.” – Bradford Perkins FAIA, MRAIC and Mary-Jean Eastman FAIA, MRAIC