Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital

Memorial Healthcare needed to expand Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital and the best solution was an intricate vertical expansion project that involved building four new floors on top of the existing four floors of the fully operational children’s hospital.

With sensitivity to proportion and scale, the design team fashioned an intervention that blurs the lines of the individual elements and establishes a new whole. Colorful stair towers and an external frame connect the two building forms.

The design of the building’s exterior pays homage to the hospital’s namesake, legendary ballplayer Joe DiMaggio, and references the intricate hand stitching on a baseball. “Stich, weave, mend” became the project team’s refrain, to describe how the project stitches two buildings together, interweaves the operational elements of the hospital and creates an envelope for mending lives.

The hospital’s interior architecture is designed to reduce stress through positive distractions and imaginative spaces. Playful colors and patterns on the four new patient floors express the hospital’s vision that “the power of play is a healing force.”

Increasing the facility from 180,000 SF to nearly 400,000 SF - and adding 92 patient beds - allowed Memorial Healthcare to provide well-appointed respite areas for staff and offer children and their families generous amenity spaces. New features include an expanded intensive care unit, a Cardiac Comprehensive Area for safer heart transplants, heart failure procedures and other cardiac critical care. In addition, a 7,000-square-foot family-centered support-work-play area offers children and families an escape for laughter, joy and energy.

The vertical bed tower expansion achieved the major goal to co-locate children’s services in a landmark facility. The project ensures Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital can treat the most complex and critical conditions, so that children and families in the region do not have to travel far to seek exceptional specialty medical care.

AIA AWARDS: Publication: Interior Design Magazine / Date: June, 2024 / Article Title: Inside a Refreshed Children’s Hospital Named for a Baseball Star • Chapter: AIA Florida / Year: 2024 / Name of Award: Merit Award of Excellence, Interiors • Chapter: IIDA Central Florida / Year: 2023 / Name of Award: Award of Excellence, Large Healthcare Interiors