The recently expanded campus of Baptist Hospital East features a new Outpatient Surgery and Patient Bed Tower Facility clad in Kingspan Benchmark panels. Windows also wrap the Park Tower, providing patients and employees with plenty of daylight and views of the surrounding greenery.

Located in Louisville, KY, Baptist Hospital East teamed with Engberg Anderson to develop and expand the campus. Architects in Engberg Anderson’s Milwaukee office designed the hospital’s 275,000-square-foot addition, which has since been named the Park Tower. The nine-story facility houses eight operating rooms, 24 prep/recovery rooms, a new Post Anesthesia Care Unit and 144 new patient rooms as well as covered parking.

Engberg Anderson collaborated with Kingspan Benchmark on the $72 million outpatient facility. The Park Tower features roughly 18,000 square feet of Kingspan Benchmark Designwall 2000H Striated panels. The smooth steel panels are finished in sandstone and white and striated to provide an attractive linear shadowing effect to the walls. Insulated with expanded polystyrene, the Designwall 2000H panels can deliver a value as high as R-22.

While designing the Park Tower, Engberg Anderson project architect Jacob Kain identified the challenges of building the new component of the hospital.

“One of the main challenges of designing the Park Tower was to get everything stacked properly,” Kain recalls. “We wanted to create a good flow between the departments in the Tower, but it was equally important that the layout provide as much access to daylight as possible.”

With views of a healing garden, greenery and a nearby park, the Tower’s many windows provide several benefits to patients. Not only can patients overlook the exterior scenery from their rooms, but they can also orient themselves more easily in relation to their surroundings. Additionally, natural light fills the patient and operating rooms.

“The landscaping played an integral part in the design process,” Kain adds. “We specifically planned the greenery to work with the building’s layout and made sure that patients and employees would always have access to the beautiful exterior views.”

The Park Tower was completed in August 2008. The project team includes Engberg Anderson (Milwaukee, WI), general contractor BE & K Building Group and panel installer JC Industries, both located in Louisville, KY.