parking spot's demise was imminent . https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-z...o/IMG_0356.JPG

HUP 2.0 Illustrations
 

I'm surprised these haven't hit the press yet that I can tell, they certainly look "finished".

Here is an illustration of the new HUP Inpatient tower with the museum on the left and part of the existing Perelman complex on the right.
http://s28.postimg.org/kq3jesewt/NPP_Front_View.jpg

This one is closer and shows some of the inside, with the museum still on the left.
http://s28.postimg.org/d2gmwhg8t/NPP...ed_Pathway.jpg

This shows what the inside may look like, from the inside with museum on the right.
http://s28.postimg.org/xwszebam5/NPP_Lobby.jpg

This one shows how the walkway between the new tower and the brick museum will be done up so people can walk from and to the train station.
http://s28.postimg.org/toy75k96l/NPP...kwayto_HUP.jpg

A night-time view that shows how it would look with Smilow and the new CHOP ambulatory tower in the same view.
http://s28.postimg.org/4gddbw48t/NPP_Night_View.jpg

Cheers,
G.

Early mockup of a partial room.
 

The patient rooms will all be private/solo rooms. Here is a partial illustration of the inside of one, note the view.
http://s28.postimg.org/5sv2ds1od/NPP...Media_Wall.jpg

I'd imagine much of the room design will change/evolve before its built. This shot makes me (almost, not really) want to get sick enough to get admitted.

Cheers,
G.

^^The building looks amazing. Both from a design and patient viewpoint.

This one looks great! Very different from most Philly buildings. I like the curves

The pedestrian path to UC regional rail is key. The route by Franklin Field is just such an out-of-the-way path to get to this huge dense hospital complex.

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I won't be that quick to judge. It's Lord Norman Foster -- that's very, very top tier. Let's see all the renderings/presentations etc.

I don't know how you can say it doesn't communicate well with anything nearby. It clearly plays off of the rotunda from the Museum of Anthropology and draws similarities to CHOP's Buerger center as well

This is pretty meaningless. Norman Foster is a great architect but this project, from the admittedly no-so-great renderings we've seen so far, isn't anything spectacular, bold, or exciting. It's nice enough sure, but it doesn't scream "starchitect" - looks something any decent firm could have cranked out. I'm still eager to see more renderings.

The Chicago hospital building looks amazing but is suited to fit into a downtown grid, which this site is not.

I doubt this will be the final rendering. And, While Norman Foster is the architect, I think he has to take into account the needs of Penn and incorporate it into the design. PennFirst team comprises of various disciplines, including executives, doctors, nurses, etc. I imagine they want this building to function for the staff as well as the patients.

I think the design for the Patient Pavillion is incredible. Classic Foster; simple shape, interest is in its texture. Wheras the example of the Johns Hopkins expansion is exactly what they'll have no qualm tearing down in 50 years if they need to. People will be fighting to save the Patient Pabilion. It's timeless, it will age well, it will be applauded not for what you see in the renderings, but for what you see when you are standing twelve inches from it; the quality materials, the detail, the craftsmanship of one-off facade fabrications.

Yeah, I mean, obviously another issue about taste, but I like this design much more than the Johns Hopkins and Chicago hospitals. The materials and massing in both are really boring. The Johns Hopkins just looks like a bunch of brick, massed orthogonally, with some 1919 market type glass...

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I dont think the price tag has much to do with the architecture. medical buildings are very expensive for many reasons- the least of which is probably the design or material palette.

Indeed a lesson in everybody's taste being different. I feel this building will be the harmony of the complex.

My thoughts exactly, I don't think it has the same price tag as CITC for purely its architectural quality.

Demo update:
https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5750/...e1cde270_c.jpg053 by tehshadowbat, on Flickr

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5833/...82f879e2_c.jpg054 by tehshadowbat, on Flickr

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5782/...0ec727ec_c.jpg055 by tehshadowbat, on Flickr

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/576/2...21091f12_c.jpg056 by tehshadowbat, on Flickr

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/608/2...27abbe5e_c.jpg061 by tehshadowbat, on Flickr

The design is leagues above Penn Tower LOL.

I hope it meets its main purpose, that staff can get patients to the O/R quickly from nearly anywhere, that the central and satellite pharmacies and labs will be well placed, and that the radiology scanners are as well. It should be easy for visitors to navigate, easy to get large gear around in the back hallways, and have better clustering of related units/floors so housestaff do not have to "round" from the 4th floor of this building to the 11th of that building and so forth. It should also be as far from scary as possible since going to the hospital terrifies many patients. And of course it has to be a successful and event-free transition when we move the patients.

I will always agree that Perelman is hideous so at least this will block view of that from several angles.

Cheers,
G.

I just wonder what will happen to the old hospital. I know they are planning more academic space, but I'm wondering will it involve gutting and reuse, or wholesale demolition/replacement, or a combination of the two....

I heard eventual demolition. Some of those buildings are really old, like Gates, not sure the attractiveness to the University would be.

That is a huge amount of space, I can see a variety of thins the school can do with the property.

I'm not sure if they made a decision, but they were throwing around ideas of a bridge to University City Trains station or a tunnel. They want to avoid the pedestrian traffic on Health Service Drive.

Nurses from the cardiac and G.I. Units in the old building are being brought to the scaled mock-ups to critique the design, identify pinch points, etc. so we can assume those units are moving to the new building. At the same time nursing education has been told their facilities will expand. They are currently housed in the old OLD (historic?) part of the hospital with the Spruce Street entrance.

They've started work on dismantling the bridge between Penn Tower and Perelman....

Yup, totally down! Moving along nicely with demo. Not playing around. :cheers:

I got invited to the design team so I'll have occasional news. Basically there are different design teams responsible for different aspects of the building.

The elevators will be in the center with the tower towards HUP being the smaller while the back tower towards the train station will be a bit bigger. There will be several podium levels that span the footprint all the way out to the sidewalk in some areas. Either the front tower will be first with the back bigger tower left for later, or they will both be done at once.

Each team is starting to work up their estimates for everything in the building. The literal number of patient floors/units is liquid as is the total bed count. Each room will be a private single patient room which is a nice step-up from how HUP is now in many areas. These rooms will allow HUP to renovate some of the older/existing floors into single patient rooms as well. So the overall bed count will not sky-rocket. The costs that each team comes up with will actually have input into how many floors are initially planned, if both towers are built at once, and so on.

When I say everything, we're calculating each computer, bed, wiring job, chair, counter, you name it LOL. It's going to be ridiculous, but pretty rewarding if we can get some decent things done. Though I'm pretty sure the physical core & shell team would win out over costly medication delivering Drones, but what the hell I may write the drones in anyway. If I have to ask for 3 (or 5) things to only get 2, then I can adapt to that quickly enough in the projections. LOL

Cheers,
G.

Interesting. So nothing we know or have seen up to this point is remotely set in stone? It may look completely different than the renderings we've seen?

It sounds like we will stick with the design overall, it's just a matter of whether the back/train-side tower goes up with the core and front tower, or later. Even if the front tower is say 20 floors, we may only "build out" 15 floors if we come up with ungodly costs per floor. It will largely be Intensive Care Units and even the non-ICU floors will be built out partly as ICUs so that they can be switched later if needed, without gutting the floors. So basically even the regular "floors" will be more expansive than most but far cheaper than the ICU "units". The floors would not have the literal respirators, extensive monitors, and other ICU-like devices/equipment but the rooms will have to be plumbed and wired for them.

A close to ideal scenario would be to construct both towers and have the front tower almost completely built out for patients. We can always build out the additional space later. A big chunk of the cost will be the podium/base which will include the new Emergency Department, a pretty massive Radiology space with numerous $xx million each scanner rooms, and so on. We'll know much more after each design team shares their initial projections.

Cheers,
G.

What is the timeline for this?

Sounds like completion is targeted late 2019 so patient move-in can start in 2020. It's going to get a pretty massive foundation with several sub-grade levels. I'd imagine parking as well, but I haven't seen the prints yet (should be soon).

Cheers,
G.

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Just to play the devil's advocate, it may be difficult in this day and age to have a grand plan and stick with it since technology and economic conditions can change so quickly. They may be doing this in a seemingly ad hoc way on purpose so that once they build something, they know it's going to suit precisely the purpose for which it's built, instead of being part of some quickly obsolete grand plan.

You can't compare it to the collection of historic and newer buildings in the main complex. That's a completely different animal--it's mess that has resulted from decades of incremental expansion.

Pretty sure that PCAM was designed to be expanded quickly and fairly orderly, but they probably wanted to hedge their bet, should things like the economy go south. It was never supposed to be a one-off $1+ billion masterpiece. The first project was the base, on which future towers (e.g., Smillow and the South Pavilion) were to be built. There's not a lot of room around health complex for horizontal expansion, so instead they went with vertical expansion.

Of course, this isn't to say that the resulting Frankenstein's monster of buildings and pavilions is the best that they could have done or should win any great design awards, but there's more going on there than meets the eye.

Perelman was originally designed to be built in four phases. The initial horseshoe center and then 3 towers afterwards. They have actually followed that at least in concept. I agree the execution is industrial looking and that's emphasized by the much stronger designs CHOP puts directly next to it.

Part of the difference is that CHOP bleeds money. "It's for the kids after all." They spent millions putting a glass facade on the main building which added (apparently) no square footage. Take Penn Medicine, when it makes money (and it makes more than CHOP typically - $3xx million vs. $2xx million last year I think I read), the Penn mothership can take that profit or a big chunk of it. I have no idea what their cut is, but it does inhibit free spending from what I have heard.

No idea if that explains the industrial look, but I'll find out from being part of the project. Should be interesting LOL.

Cheers,
G.

Its a fact that the design of Perelman is terrible. They may of had a "plan" but they failed miserably. Let's start with the fact that they schedule to many appointments for the garage and valet to handle. They have no place to put ambulance and paratransit vehicles so they throw them in with the 700+ valet vehicles. They have a cross walk in the middle of the valet driveway, Quite frankly its a miracle no one has been hit. Then when you enter the building, good luck waiting for an elevator. In fact they moved the valet cashier in hopes of having more people use the escalators that malfunction daily. I'm going to stop my rant.... :koko:


The building itself may be called Perelman aka PCAM but its not all Penn Medicine. Smilow is part of Penn the university as well as JMEC. Its all confusing.

4 Levels of below grade parking. Supposedly 1500 spots, equivalent to what Buerger Center has.

So your whole complaint about the building involves parking and slow elevators?

I actually have always gotten lucky with parking. I make my appointments around 2pm to avoid traffic. Don't know if that's a good time for the garage?

The elevators, however, are indeed so bad, you could proclaim as much from the top of the Art Museum steps, interrupting a choreographed chorus line of dancers performing the finale to the Thanksgiving Day Parade so that your message would be heard loud and clear over a live television broadcast, and it would not be considered overkill.


Update: might I add that the building was indeed poorly designed. It was not designed for the user. And I'm not just talking about patients, I include personnel as users in this example too. Although, they benefit from becoming conditioned to it. The building wasn't even designed around the disciplines/departments that inhabit it. Some operations are split, under-suited, over-suited, or just plain lacking of any reference to the hospital as a whole. I believe the building was designed based on aesthetics (which are not that great, just a modern cube within a cube) and the idea that Penn got in their heads that big building projects should be evolutionary, or built in bits as needed. This is probably so their capital budget looks more even when spread out over the years? How quickly they needed to begin the addition on Perelman should have told them this wasn't necessarily a good idea and they should just build the Patient Pavilion in one go.

Thats just the start... Have you ever been inside?

Very well said. :tup: 2pm is an ideal time. Beats the 9-11am hour where there are usually 500+ appointments per hour.

To try an explain what the building is like without actually being inside in various departments is difficult. The work they do inside is great. Some of the best Doctors and staff in the world, but they are stuck working in a flawed building.

Although, the Smilow floors are designed much better as is JMEC.

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LOL, that helipad is going to get a lot closer when the new patient tower is built. It will be sitting on the top of the back end, almost overhead of the JMEC.

Cheers,
G.

Penn Tower demo update:
https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1611/...f74ba15d_c.jpgPenn Tower 2/5/16 by tehshadowbat, on Flickr

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1471/...4a5169c1_c.jpgPenn Tower 2/5/16 by tehshadowbat, on Flickr

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1514/...22e1c658_c.jpgPenn Tower 2/5/16 by tehshadowbat, on Flickr

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1451/...32dcf769_c.jpgPenn Tower 2/5/16 by tehshadowbat, on Flickr

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1699/...98860b04_c.jpgPenn Tower 2/5/16 by tehshadowbat, on Flickr

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1534/...a8dcedd7_c.jpgPenn Tower 2/5/16 by tehshadowbat, on Flickr

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1499/...c229d698_c.jpgPenn Tower 2/5/16 by tehshadowbat, on Flickr

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1604/...75e07f23_c.jpgPenn Tower 2/5/16 by tehshadowbat, on Flickr

^bye felicia

2/17/16

Current Penn Tower demolition continues

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...fb&oe=576AD3F0

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...37&oe=575FA56F

Right above where it says "Tower" up top had some of the greatest views of the city. Did a nice little stint working for Penn Medicine, met some good people. :cheers:

2/24/2016

Penn tower demo, from 2 days ago:

http://s6.postimg.org/bjn2fz5cx/image.jpg

Photo by Fran Rothwein via Building Philly:
https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...7a&oe=5791138E
source