Trees on Main Glass Facade Welcome Visitors to Parkland Hospital

Parkland Memorial Hospital, in Dallas, Texas, has many striking aspects. But for sublime beauty, design ingenuity and emotional resonance, nothing stands out like the main glass façade.

The website for the architectural firm HDR describes it this way: “[It] is defined by a tree graphic that at a distance transforms from a dense summer canopy on the western façade to a delicate branch pattern that covers the south-facing lobby. At closer inspection the tree graphic is created by the names of donors who contributed to this public building.” Or, as the Alpolic-Americas website says, the graphic “forms a mural of deciduous trees in winter on one side and summer on the other – symbolizing growth and renewal with the passage of time.”

Oldcastle Teams with Kyro Systems

The leaves, branches and tree trunks on the façade feature more than 25,000 names belonging to Parkland donors and employees. Donations of $10 or more earned a spot on the donor walls, alongside hospital employees.

Working with customer Kyro Systems, Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope provided 885 panels featuring Vitro Starphire and Vitro Solarban 70 XL glass with the names digitally printed on the 35,000 square feet of glass, using ceramic inks in varying levels of opacity. The outcome was a near exact replica of the designer’s render.

The striking graphic is in keeping with one of the project’s driving design concepts – that of a “hospital in a park.” According to Healthcare Design magazine, that theme “influenced the creation of linear parks, gardens, and views and sightlines from within the building back out onto the campus.”

Project Receives Five LEED Gold Certifications

Parkland’s landmark campus is one of the busiest public hospitals in the nation, serving more than one million patients per year. The AIA award-winning $1.27 billion project replaced the original Parkland Memorial Hospital built in 1954. The entire healthcare campus was sustainably designed so Parkland can efficiently manage and control energy use, and by using recycled, local building materials it reduced the carbon footprint.

At the time of construction, it was the nation’s largest public healthcare project ever to be built in one phase.

Parkland Memorial Hospital has received five LEED Gold Certifications. The U.S. Green Building Council says LEED certification provides independent, third-party verification that a building, home or community was built to “achieve high performance” in sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality.

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