THE SAMMY OFER HEART CENTER,

Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Israel

BUILDING TYPOLOGY

 The Sammy Ofer Heart Center at Tel Aviv

Sourasky Medical Center, designed by
Sharon Architects and Ranni Ziss
Architects opened in 2011.
 The building, located in the center of Tel
Aviv, was designed as a monolithic cube
clad in glass with prominent red recessed
balconies.
 The building was designed to connect to
an adjacent, historical ‘Bauhaus’ hospital
building through an atrium.
CONT…

 The 70m (230ft.) high building consists of 55,000 m2 (592,000 ft2 ) and includes
thirteen medical floors of 3,100 m2 (33,300 ft2 ) per floor and four underground
parking floors designed with the possibility of conversion to an emergency 650-
bed hospital.
 The 15,000 m2 (161,400 ft2) underground “sheltered” floors were designed to be
resistant to 3 chemical and biological warfare.
 The building was designed by system separation of three main levels: The primary
system which consists of a 7.6m x 7.6m structural grid, central core, distributed
MEP shafts, and the building envelope. Secondary system includes the MEP
systems and the interior non-loadbearing walls, and the tertiary system consists
of the ward equipment, including medical devices and furniture.
 DESIGN STRATEGY

 The main objective of the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical

Center in the design of the building was to construct
the largest structure possible to enlarge the hospital
built area for future development. The hospital
management decided to maximize the building area
and height by applying pressure on the municipality
planning guideline limitations. This objective led to a
design strategy aimed to build a “container with
capacity” for future infill of unknown medical
programs. As a result, the building was designed as a
base & envelope with seven shell floors for future fit-
out completion, implementing the Open Building
method of system separation.
PROGRAM

 The building that was defined and designed as a Heart Center has changed its functional program
considerably since it was constructed (Putievsky Pilosof and Kalay 2017).
 The cardiology division, initially programmed to relocate all the hospital cardiac units, clinics and
surgery units, occupies less than 30% of the building on three main floors.
 After the building opened in 2011, the hospital management decided to relocate their oncology
division to the new building in order to centralize the cancer treatment in one location, to
enhance hospital efficiency and patient-centered care.
 The change in plans can be explained by changing needs since cancer became the number one
cause of death and statistically surpassed cardiac diseases.
 Also, the hospital management decided to relocate other functions to the building since their
previous locations required renovation or extension, or because they received funds to
reconstruct a specific medical unit. Consequently, the building has evolved to include neurology,
dermatology, internal medicine, outpatient clinics and research labs.
 DESIGN PROCESS

 The design process, which began in 2005, reflected a variety of concepts to deal with the tight
budgetary, regulatory and environmental constraints.
 The design team used a method of developing design options and capacity studies to support
decision making by the hospital management.
 The long design process of over thirteen years involved many different professionals and decision
makers. Many of the hospital medical managers were replaced, resulting in reconsideration of the
design and requests for alternative design options.
 The development of the project by phases, using system levels, allowed the architects to divide the
workload between the two collaborative offices and to control the development of the project by
different design teams, project managers and consultants.
CONSTRUCTION BY PHASES:

 The Sammy Ofer Heart Center was

constructed in five main phases: (1) the
underground emergency hospital, (2) core
and envelope of floors 1-10 including a
mechanical roof floor, (3) interior fit-out of
floors 0-3, (4) interior fit-out of floors 4-6,
and (5) interior fit-out of floors 7-10. The
phasing stages, divided by the floors in the
building, created a process of fit-out from
bottom upwards. Although this process of
deferred completion of secondary and
tertiary systems was planned in advance, it
still created a challenge both for the
construction and the operation of the
running units.
CHANGE IN PRACTICE:

 In a study of the evolutionary process of the building in the years 2005-2018, the author
documented the changes that were made to the building during the design process,
construction phases, and occupancy.
 The study illustrates the significant change in medical functions on the upper floors of the
building, transforming the Heart Center into a multi-disciplinary medical center including an
oncology division, neurology, and other medical programs.
 The hospital also added two shell floors to the building just before construction began, which
required redesigning the buildings’ primary system including the structure, MEP systems, and
facades and caused a delay of a few months in the design and construction process.
 Most of the changes were made upon completion of the secondary and tertiary levels, while the
primary level was changed only before the construction of phase 1.
 SPECIFIC ELEMENTS:

 Red ramps- bridges are suspended like

arteries in the atrium space and lead the
public of visitors to waiting galleries facing
each other in the two buildings, in figurative
tension. The historic Ichilov Hospital will be
renovated in its original spirit of modernism.
The new Heart building is the only medical
building in Israel designed without fences and
with a side that interfaces and runs parallel to
a main city street – Weizmann Street. A two-
level urban gallery, typical of Tel-Aviv, was
designed parallel to a new wide public square
bordering Weizmann Street.
CONT…

 This urban gallery has a coffee shop,

commercial areas, small theater for
the benefit of the hospital patients
and visitors, and serves as a meeting
place between the patients and their
visitors as well as the influx of people
from the street. Positioned in the glass
front of the building, like ventricles of
the heart, are red windows that serve
as "theater boxes", providing the
patients with vital contact with the
outside. "Healing gardens" surround
the building and are integrated in the
interior spaces.
ARCHITECTURAL PLANS:
Floor 1:Cardiac hospitalization & ICU units Floor 3 & 9: Internal medicine
Floor 8: Oncology clinics Floor 7: Oncology inpatient & outpatient
Floor 10: Research labs Typical floor plan for future completion