-By Jean Nayar, Renderings courtesy of HOK

Financed with $1 billion in capital budget funding, the Health and Hospitals Corporation of New York City has been involved in efforts to upgrade its hospitals for the past 15 years. Among the facilities designated for improvement is the 127-year-old Harlem Hospital Center (HHC), which actually consists of a collection of aging buildings coalesced around 136th Street and Lenox Avenue in Manhattan. Thanks to the collaborative efforts of Dr. John Palmer, Harlem Hospital Center's executive director, along with the project's architects, HOK, and key representatives of the neighborhood, a new six-story, 185,600-sq.-ft., $200-million Patient Pavilion—slated for completion in 2012—promises to establish the Hospital Center as a major civic presence that enriches the cultural core of its community.

Initial plans for the upgrade began in 1999, and in 2003 the New York office of HOK won the opportunity to produce the master plan for the project. Later, in 2005, the firm, along with Jack Travis of Bronx, N.Y.-based Studio JTA, was awarded the commission to design a new pavilion and renovate portions of its existing structures (a new 300-car parking facility, developed by Desman Associates, will also be part of the overall $319 million project). Sensitive to the needs and aspirations of the community, Dr. Palmer embraced a collaborative approach to the project from the start, calling a town hall meeting in 2000 and establishing a steering committee made up of representatives of the community, elected officials, hospital staff members, and representatives of the HHC. "The steering committee has been in place since 2003 and insisted on being a part of the process of selecting the architects, contract manager, and vendors who would work on the project," says Palmer. "They also wanted to be sure there would be a record of minority- and women-owned business quotas being met, and they helped develop a community employment program related to the project through which 1,900 applications for training for employment were made, and 50 people from the community were ultimately employed."

Major functional goals for the project were to house key Harlem Hospital programs in the new building and renovate key nursing and clinical units in the existing 40-year-old, 18-story Martin Luther King pavilion. The new building, which will serve as the central link between the MLK pavilion and the existing four-story, 11-year-old Ron Brown pavilion, was designed to be a patient- and family-friendly facility, accommodating a new emergency department, as well as state-of-the-art treatment facilities, including imaging and surgery units and critical-care beds.

Another key goal of historic and emotional significance to the steering committee was the preservation of portions of existing buildings that were of cultural value to the community. Of particular interest was a series of large-scale murals executed in the 1930s as part of the government's WPA program. "The murals represent one of the first instances where public art in the United States was produced by African American artists," says architect Richard Saravay, HOK's senior principal on the project. "The largest mural, a 5 ft. by 80 ft., multi-panel work called 'Pursuit of Happiness' by the artist Vertis Hayes, tells the story of the African diaspora from agrarian life in the African homeland to positions in the professions and the arts in the industrial north of America. So there is a lot of history and attachment to them in the community." In the course of previous renovations of other Harlem Hospital buildings during the 1950s and '60s, several structures were demolished. "The committee feared that any excuse to tear down the institution's buildings would lead to a loss of identity associated with the institution," says Palmer.

"In response to this concern, the master plan included a requirement to remove, restore, and install the murals in the new building," says architect Chris Korsh, a principal at HOK. "They're now being restored by an art conservator, and they will be relocated in their own museum-quality gallery space just off the lobby of the new pavilion and visible from the street."

The murals also served as a source of inspiration for the interior design and exterior façade of the new pavilion, which was HOK developed in collaboration with Travis, an African American architect and teacher, whose firm specializes in what he calls "cultural design" specifically aimed at resonating with black Americans. "My concept revolved around the idea of 'destinations' and how the lion's share of African American slaves came mostly from three points of departure in Africa—the Gold Coast of Ghana, Angola, and the Isle of Goree—before moving on to various points of destinations in the Americas, often mixing with the Taino and Arawak natives and Spanish-, English-, French-, and Portuguese-speaking people of Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad, other Caribbean islands, and several South and Central American countries, as well as the French- and English-speaking people in North America. The idea was to explore the historical essence of being black, and it started in Africa," says Travis. "It's very difficult to know how 'blackness' affects you positively when so many in our community are dysfunctional and disoriented and become negative forces acting against the best interests of the community. So as an architect the question is: How can you stop this? The directional inferences embodied in this design aim to help people in the community reconnect with their origins."

To express these ideas architecturally, materials and motifs in the central atrium of the new pavilion conspire to uplift and reinforce the historic cultural essence of the community. "The design of the main lobby includes a heritage wall made of a material that looks like rough wood and is designed to accommodate art and objects with strong cultural importance to the community," says Saravay. In addition, the terrazzo floors planned for the space are distinguished with bands of terrazzo positioned at a 22-degree angle off the street grid, pointing due East "in the direction of Mother Africa," says Travis. Finish colors and patterns planned for the primary interior atrium space were inspired by African textiles, while sections of the "Pursuit of Happiness" mural will be enlarged and reproduced with a ceramic frit technique to cover a vast portion of the façade of the new building.

"We knew there was no question that HOK would produce an excellent design," says Travis. "But when you talk about putting images of black people on a building that's six stories high, you take it to another level by addressing the cultural dynamics that are as important as design excellence in creating something that resonates with the community."