Alton Memorial Hospital is a fast growing community hospital located in Alton, Illinois. Due to their quick growth, they realized the need to relocate the hospital’s existing double patient rooms into a modern facility as well as create a new main entrance for the existing hospital. The result is the 78,000 SF Bed Tower Addition that will house 76 private patient rooms, observation beds for the Emergency Department, Inpatient Physical Therapy, a Pharmacy, and a new lobby.
The hospital also needed to improve traffic flow and create easier access to parking. The best solution was to create a new entrance to the existing hospital and the new addition offered the opportunity to do this. The new main lobby and corridor will organize and simplify the movement of patients and visitors upon their arrival to the hospital immediately creating a peaceful environment. The new space also creates a new modern image for the hospital, with sensitive design details to humanize the space and create a spacious and bright healing environment.
The new private patient rooms will ensure dignity and comfort, reduce infection rates, increase safety and eliminate the potential for incompatible roommates. The major features of these new healing patient areas include canted private rooms with integral family areas, a decentralized nursing concept, and a direct connection to existing hospital clinical areas.
Alton is one of the great Illinois river towns. It is situated at the union of three American rivers - the Mississippi, the Illinois and the Missouri – in the River Bend region known for their dramatic bluffs, rolling countryside and surrounding farmland. When Pratt Design Studio began working with Alton Memorial Hospital, it was important that the new building ‘belong’ in their community. To do this, the team incorporated these important community elements of the river, bluffs and harvest into a unique identifier. The river is represented by the horizontal lines, the bluffs are represented by the two curves, and the harvest is represented in a shape that symbolizes grain. This custom pattern appears in the exterior and is referenced again throughout the interiors and reinforces icons that are significant to the client and community to remind patients, visitors and staff of their commitment to community health.
