Healthcare

E. W. and Mary Firstenburg Tower, Vancouver, WA
Owner: PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center
Client/Architect: NBBJ
Completion: 2007

The cornerstone of this $105 million expansion is a new eight-story patient tower featuring a heart and vascular center, bone and joint center, and brain and spine center.

Open view architecture highlights the extraordinary utilities inside the central utility plant:

• One 175-ton chiller and two 390-ton chillers provide enough cooling power to make 130,000 Sno Cones per hour.
• Two buried 30,000 gallon fuel oil tanks and a 25,000 gallon fire water storage tank with two pumps. The CUP pumps enough water every hour to float 10 grey whales.
• Three boiler systems offer between 300 and 600 horsepower for steam generation...enough steam to heat 700 homes or power two bullet trains.

2009 ACEC WA Design Excellence Silver Award: Original or Innovative Application of New or Existing Techniques

Photography © Benjamin Benschneider