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

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

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

Emphasizing patient health and recovery, the façade was carefully designed for visual and thermal comfort while allowing views over the Manhattan skyline and East River. Vertical fins help regulate the available daylight and heat gain in the building. This creates a dynamic and responsive skin that meets the needs of the occupants and program while creating visual interest and reducing heat loads.

Working alongside 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 center was designed to help restore patients’ health and well-being, offering nearly every aspect of outpatient cancer care across many specialties. This new model of care creates 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 carefully thought out 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 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.
Touchpoints that borrow from hospitality and unobtrusive technology are featured 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 also supports medical staff with goals to improve collaboration and provide space to attend to personal needs. Carefully placed conference rooms and gathering spaces enable nurses and doctors to work as an integrated team to more effectively serve a patient’s treatment plan.

“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