Lexington, Kentucky
For over a decade, the Veterans Administration pharmacy operations had been over-stressed and dispersed throughout the Cooper Drive hospital campus. Omni Architects was retained to consolidate the outpatient and in-patient pharmacies into a single location.
The solution required a five-phase implementation strategy including a 3,500 SF first phase addition. While accommodating new sunlit offices on the perimeter of the building, the addition also provided “swing space” so that all hospital functions could remain in service during the construction process. Because replication of the existing brick facade would have been difficult and clumsy, a sleek metal panel exterior with frameless glass was chosen as a contrast to the body of the existing hospital.
2008 Merit Award
AIA Kentucky
Jury comments: “This sensitively detailed and scaled addition provides a welcome contrast to the existing, much larger-scaled structure. Clean lines and simple massing work to enhance the contrast between old and new. The addition is true to itself and its time in its use of materials and, despite a very different vocabulary, works extremely well with the existing facility.”