University of Chicago Medical Center West Campus Center for Care and Discovery Parking Garage

The building’s design allows its significant mass to respond to the grander campus scale while also engaging the pedestrian community of students, residents, medical staff, and patients.
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The garage is connected to the Center for Care and Development to extend the campus’ level two public circulation system with a pedestrian bridge. The new lower-level service tunnel connects the new dock and services area with the existing campus material distribution tunnel system. The western portion of the garage structure is hardened to accept a future doctors’ office building above the Garage.

Clayco’s design-build team incorporated the planning and infrastructure to allow for a Trauma Center to be incorporated into the first level of the parking garage. This required the team to meet with the City of Chicago Building of Standards and Tests, Illinois Department of public health as well as several authorities having jurisdiction to ensure future fit out of the trauma center could be incorporated without structural, and code remediation to be done. The final solution created an enclosure and separation from the adjacent and stacked parking structure to ensure hazards from cars and fuel loads were appropriately separated.

Knock out slabs for future patient elevator transportation was incorporated into the concrete structure as well as emergency power access and required future generator loads that would be needed for a fully functioning Emergency department.

The exterior incorporates the campus’ primary vocabulary of stone and glass materials. The primary structure of the garage is articulated and organized to express a hierarchy of scale between the mass of the building’s structural system with a secondary scaling element of an infill texture of staggered pattern of metal-framed, translucent glass and open panels. Additional panels of “kinetic-art” wind veils respond to wind currents and activate these large wall surfaces further enhancing the textural quality of the building skin. This approach allows the building’s significant mass to respond to the grander campus scale while also engaging the pedestrian community of students, residents, medical staff, and patients.

The parking garage will be registered with the Green Building Institute’s Green Globe Program.