DESIGN
MGH Phillip and Susan Ragon Building
Firm: NBBJ
Role: Project Architect, with focus on interior public spaces, lobbies, and meditation space.
Overview
This 450-bed facility at MGH meets the growing demand for high-quality healthcare, with 12 floors dedicated to advanced treatment, procedures, and interventions. The building also features adaptable inpatient units, state-of-the-art operating rooms, imaging suites, exam rooms, and infusion centers, all powered entirely by renewable electricity. A central connective element, spanning both horizontally and vertically, unifies amenities and waiting areas while maximizing natural daylight. This shared collaboration space seamlessly links the two buildings, enhancing the experience for patients, families, and medical staff. The building boasts a new conference center, auditorium, and public meditation space for all folks to find respite.
Urban Intervention
The hospital expansion is located in the heart of Boston, Massachusettes. The site itself sits on the boundary between historical, low-rise buildings and modern high-rise construction. This positioning requires the podium and bed towers to respond to the convergence of two separate local identities. The podium scale, color and material echo the brick materiality of the architecture south of Cambridge street, while the bed towers tie into the scale of the architecture north of Cambridge street.
Auditorium
The auditorium includes retractable seats and tiers to allow for multiple configurations. Lecture style seating can seat hundreds of people, while banquet style accommodates several tables on a single flat floor.
Conference
The conference center, adjacent to the auditorium, provides flexible wall configurations to accommodate various modes of meeting. Glassy mobile walls allow borrowed natural light into the individual rooms.
Meditation
This open meditation space has a direct visual and physical connection to the rooftop garden. Clerestory windows and a sweeping angled ceiling allow cascading natural light into the room of reflection.
Mindful Craft
The highest quality of design thinking weaves itself into every aspect of a project, from concept, through planning, and into detailing construction. Specialty wall panel, ceiling panel, casework and millwork details were meticulously curated and refined so that they could be consistently used throughout several of the public spaces in the hospital. The conference center, auditorium and meditation space shared a unified set of finish details for consistency of craft.