The Dean McGee Eye Institute needed a centralized facility in downtown Oklahoma City. They required the Institute double its research and clinical space. The new 75,500 square foot four-story medical office and research building addition was constructed immediately adjacent to the existing Dean McGee Eye Institute on the OU Medical Center Campus. The facility houses new research laboratories, clinical offices, administrative spaces, and leasable tenant space for future research endeavors.
This four-story concrete flat-slab addition clad in glazing, precast concrete, and brick elements features significant cantilevered slab and wall elements. It is linked to the existing building via internal steel circulation bridges visible from within the circular glass and architecturally exposed structural steel atrium that serves as the new focal point for the Institute. The new atrium provides a new central reception area for patrons. The curved geometry of the atrium serves to soften the Brutalist architectural style of the original building and features glass enclosed elevators, ceiling-suspended artwork, and a floating sunshade system on the western exterior face. Careful coordination with the tie-in to the existing building was required to keep disruption of the on-going services to a minimum.
A new cantilevered steel entry canopy serves a circular drive off of Stanton L. Young Blvd. that feeds through the four-story, brick-clad architectural cast-in-place concrete wall extending to the east and serves as a portal to the new parking garage. The brick façade of the feature wall underwent several cladding changes throughout design that required some iterative design exercises and value engineering from the architectural and structural team.
Replacing existing surface lots with a new two-story 378 space concrete parking garage, the facility’s prior parking capacity is effectively doubled. The garage has at-grade entrances at each level featuring both public and controlled-access parking. Below-grade ventilation is provided through a combination of forced air exhaust fans and sloping adjacent grades. The basement retaining walls were integrated with the perimeter beams with unique connections to allow the garage framing to operate independently of the rigid basement walls. This design allowed contractor flexibility by simplifying sequencing during construction. The upper level of parking features a curved ramp utilizing concrete pan joists and post-tensioned concrete girders that follows the curvilinear design of the adjacent new medical office building. In addition, the garage incorporates an elevated entry plaza with a paver system surface and a cantilevered steel canopy to provide a southern entry to both the new and existing buildings.
