Dell Seton Medical Center at The University of Texas

The Challenge

The University of Texas Medical Center sought to anchor a new teaching, patient care and research district with Austin’s sole Level 1 trauma hospital located on a sloped site in a dense urban setting.

The Design Solution

This 517,000 square foot, 195-bed teaching hospital maximizes a small footprint and creates an accessible gateway to the UT Medical Center campus. HKS designers kept the urban scale in mind through a pedestrian-friendly ground level plaza, interior courtyards for peaceful reflection, and a sky bridge connecting otherwise disjointed floors. The building is sensitive to the natural context, offering views of the Texas state capitol and visual access to the natural beauty of Waller Creek and the revitalized Waterloo Park. Dell Seton’s building materials also pay homage to the site and the University of Texas at Austin campus by employing reclaimed pecan wood from trees removed from the site prior to construction and the university’s iconic, local limestone.

Because of its sloped site, the hospital’s lobby, emergency department and radiology could not be housed on the same floor, so the design team opted to place the ED and radiology department on the lower level with its own ambulance entrance and placed the lobby on first floor. A sky bridge connects the parking garage to the lobby, and the lobby provides elevator access to the ED.

The Design Impact

A significant portion of the hospital was prefabricated offsite, with elements ranging from exterior skin panels and rebar cages to patient room headwalls and footwalls. This allowed for a three-month reduction in exterior construction time and $2 million in construction cost savings.

As the Austin area’s only Level 1 trauma center for adults, the hospital now plans to expand inpatient and surgical areas through vertical additions and integrate new technologies like interactive patient care boards and digital signage.

The facility is part of a vibrant, diverse, dense urban district with human-scaled architecture. The LEED Gold-certified, 195-bed teaching hospital is the first new academic medical center on an undergraduate campus in the United States and is Austin’s first teaching hospital.