AUSTIN, Texas—Austin Regional Clinic (ARC) has embarked on a transformative project to replace a prefabricated metal building at its Ben White Boulevard location with a two-story, state-of-the-art medical office building. The Central Texas healthcare provider hired Lawrence Group Architects to perform a feasibility study and design for the new building.

Lawrence Group began the project by performing a detailed feasibility study of existing buildings on the site and assessing the area for programmatic and infrastructural conditions. The study informed ARC administrators to opt for a new building, bypassing a costly adaptive reuse option.

The 63,000-square-foot project will mark ARC’s debut of an Ambulatory Surgery Center which will occupy half of the clinic’s first level. The remainder of the building’s space will feature a comprehensive suite of specialty care services such as dermatology, podiatry, cardiology, musculoskeletal, gastrointestinal and more.

Currently progressing through the City of Austin’s permitting approval process, construction on the medical office building is expected to begin in July 2024.

“Lawrence Group played a pivotal role in tailoring the building’s spaces to meet ARC’s precise requirements, while adhering to city and state regulations. The subsequent design phase encompasses site improvements and the construction of a flexible building that can accommodate a multitude of medical uses,” said Lawrence Group Austin’s Managing Principal Luma Jaffar, AIA, RIBA, LEED BD+C.

The patient-centered design incorporates locally sourced materials, such as the use of limestone veneer with dark metal panels to reflect ARC’s community-focused values, plus wood panels throughout the interior that provide a welcoming ambiance for patients and staff alike.

The project is designed to achieve an Austin Energy Green Building (AEGB) 3 Stars rating through the use of sustainable materials, energy efficient systems, and natural daylighting.

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ST. LOUIS, Mo.—Lawrence Group recently employed its design expertise to envision a new $34 million Ronald McDonald House in St. Louis City.

The new 76,000-square-foot, four-story Grove Ronald McDonald House is under construction at 4321 Chouteau Ave. in the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood and will replace a pair of older Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC) of St. Louis locations on Park Avenue and West Pine to expand the organization’s capacity to serve about 450 more families each year (40% more than current capacity).

Ronald McDonald Houses are known throughout the world as welcoming spaces where families of seriously ill children can rest and bond with other families going through similar challenges as their children receive care in nearby hospitals and medical facilities. They provide a true home-away-from-home for families during an extremely difficult time, and as such the spaces are thoughtfully designed with the families’ needs in mind.

The organization’s goal was to combine amenities of its two existing St. Louis City Ronald McDonald Houses into a larger, state-of-the-art facility with easy access to St. Louis Children’s Hospital, SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital and Shriner’s Hospital for Children – St. Louis. In 2019, the organization reported having to turn away a family in need over 3,000 times, with the need continuing to grow in recent years.

“This is a really great expanse to be able to build a House to support the families of children getting medical care at one of the three pediatric hospitals,” said Mike DeCola, RMHC Campaign Co-Chair. “Now, we are going to have one House in town serving three hospitals; the maintenance costs will be lower and each room is actually a suite with a bedroom area, a work/living area, as well as a private bath, so it’s much more accommodating. The Houses that we have been using in the city to serve families were great when we first started, but they have a limited number of rooms and they have shared bathrooms, which is really not how our families want to spend their time when they’re here trying to help their child heal.”

Lawrence Group provided full-service architectural and interior design on the new 72-bedroom building; fixture, equipment and furniture specification and procurement; and landscape design. BSI Constructors is the general contractor on the project.

Projected to open in summer 2024, the Grove Ronald McDonald House represents the true spirit of collaboration and trust between Lawrence Group, the organization and its key partners, as well as Lawrence Group’s continued commitment to the St. Louis community.

“You have parents, siblings and families of children with different medical conditions staying at the House at any given time; so our design really needed to focus on providing a safe and comfortable home-away-from-home for families from across the globe,” said Galen Vassar, Senior Interior Designer and Associate Principal at Lawrence Group. “We relied a lot on our hospitality expertise to design spaces that comfortably accommodate everyone’s needs. We relied on our multi-family expertise to design a House that functions and performs for multiple people. And we relied on our healthcare expertise to design unique amenities like an immunosuppressed wing featuring a family kitchen and lounge/gathering space for families of immunocompromised children. From start to finish, this was a project rooted in heart – in celebrating, appreciating and caring for others.”

Through Lawrence Group’s design, RMHC St. Louis was able to realize amenities and “wish list” items for the Grove Ronald McDonald House that the organization had long desired, including:

• Interactive game rooms
• Wellness suite with fitness, yoga and massage rooms
• Well-appointed, long-stay guest rooms
• Work-from-home spaces
• Rooftop patio
• Commercial kitchen
• Laundry facilities
• Serenity spaces
• Hospitality lounge on levels 2-4 with comfortable seating, TV, small kitchenette and vending machines
• ADA-compliant playroom featuring an imaginative tree structure and slide

Lawrence Group’s designers paid particular attention to the guest room interiors, realizing the importance of comfort to the families who will stay there.

“We worked as if we were designing our own bedrooms,” said Vassar. “The guest rooms needed to be places that were comforting for families and made them feel safe. That lends itself to a color palette that’s neutral, calm and soft.”

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SPRINGFIELD, Ill.—For many children, a trip to the doctor can be anxiety-inducing or even downright scary. Pediatricians’ offices have long tried to combat that fear by creating a softer and more child-friendly environment with toys, games and colorful décor, but what if the building itself was designed from the ground-up to directly address and distract from children’s anxiety — starting from the moment they pull into the parking lot?

This was the concept behind Lawrence Group’s design of the new $23 million Springfield Clinic pediatric center in Springfield, Ill. – a 41,500-square-foot facility consolidating multiple pediatric practices across Springfield under one roof, including general pediatrics, dermatology, lab and radiology services. The facility officially welcomed its first patients on Oct. 16, 2023. The general contractor on the project was O’Shea Builders of Springfield, Ill.

The project came to the design team through a longstanding relationship between one of Lawrence Group’s business development professionals and the Vice President of Facilities, Real Estate and Construction at Springfield Clinic.

“They were looking for something unique and different that still supported their brand but had a new approach, and it had to appeal to a wide range of ages from newborns to young adults in their early twenties, so that’s where our expertise in ground-up construction and healthcare and hospitality design came into play,” said Lawrence Group Director of Interiors Julie Steffens, NCIDQ.

The building was designed inside out with pediatric patients and their caregivers in mind, employing an ‘on stage’ (patients) and ‘off stage’ (staff and providers) model that provides complete separation between these two groups for a seamless patient experience.

“It’s a trend in healthcare design that a lot of organizations are moving to from that experiential standpoint,” Steffens said.

The model was one that Springfield Clinic already had in the works at another facility under construction in Jackson, Ill. Clinic administrators wanted to bring that same methodology and branding to all its clinics. With four pediatric practices across Springfield merging into one space under this new concept, the biggest question was whether it would work for all of them.

“From a culture standpoint and operational flow, there’s a lot of change that they are going to be going through for the good of the organization itself as well as the patient experience,” said Steffens.

Once there was buy-in from the various stakeholders, Lawrence Group proceeded to focus on creating a unique healthcare experience through interior and exterior design with a guiding principle of creating elements of distraction and discovery around every corner to reduce the stress of visiting patients.

“The whole idea of this project is about a journey starting with that ride to the doctor’s office and that connection between a parent and child or a caregiver and a child,” said Steffens. “Those elements of distraction start when they arrive on site with strategically placed walking paths for safety that have these moments of discovery embedded with footprints and leaves, and exterior sculptures even before they get into the interior.”

Lawrence Group Design Architect Kevin Le used multi-hued terracotta baguettes across the building’s façade, strategically placed to create an immediate visual impression as visitors pull up to and enter the building. The baguettes rise above the roofline on a slope, allowing the sky to peek through.

“They wanted to be different and bring the future to this area as opposed to blending with what is there, furthering their mission and their brand identity,” said Lawrence Group Architect and Project Manager Ganesh Sathyan. “We wanted to continue that feeling going inside, one surprise after another.”

Those surprises include large fish tanks, a slide that goes from the second floor to the first and a significant amount of artwork throughout the spaces, both on-stage and off-stage. Lawrence Group worked with St. Louis art consultancy TOC Artwork to curate a variety of both limited-edition and commissioned pieces, including two kinetic art sculptures installed on the exterior.

“TOC really listened and tailored the artwork selections to the providers’ vision. It’s pretty unique to Springfield and they did tap into some local artists in the community for a few pieces,” said Steffens. “The providers were so heavily invested in the art and that was the one piece where they could really personalize their spaces. Many of them use the artwork as a point of conversation to engage the patient and get them talking about something that’s familiar to them.”

The artwork was carefully selected to tie into the color story created by the interior design team, with six colors used as a means of wayfinding. Each clinic corridor is identified by a unique color, thoughtfully applied so as to not be overwhelming when entering the space. More neutral fixed elements are brightened with pops of color in the artwork, furniture and accents. The design concept also had to support Springfield Clinic’s brand, so the interior design team worked closely with the clinic’s marketing and brand experience team to ensure proper execution.

No project is without its challenges, and the biggest one for Springfield Clinic was its mid-pandemic timeline. With work starting early in 2020, the subsequent shutdowns caused substantial schedule shifts. Delays and shortages of materials also required advanced planning. The project’s general contractor guided the Lawrence Group team on acquiring certain materials, like metal decking, long before they were needed in order to ensure procurement. Other materials had to be fully substituted due to extensive delays.

“The pandemic taught us a lot and we experienced a lot of circumstances that forced us to think differently about how a project gets put together and gets built,” Sathyan said. “In healthcare, very little for us has been cookie cutter. Every client is different and every solution is different. What we pride ourselves on is the fact that we’re able to translate the dreams of our clients into reality. The client came to us with a vision to be a premier pediatric facility, and this is the end product.”

Throughout the entire design/build process, the Lawrence Group team kept the patient experience as its guiding principles for all decisions and solutions, knowing the profound impact the completed facility would have on the community’s youngest members.

“From the beginning, the entire team from the design team to the client side really came together and worked transparently and creatively. The final product is the result of trust, respect and team collaboration,” said Steffens.

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