Silver Hill Hospital
Martin Center
Pain Management Unit
Silver Hill Hospital's Pain Management Unit, also called Martin Center, is a 1970’s era, heavy timber pavilion-like building that houses the hospital’s sports facilities including a pool, gymnasium, spa services, and a large assembly room for group gatherings. The 25,000 square foot building is constructed of natural materials including fieldstone walls, lots of glass windows and doors, and exposed glulam columns and beams.
Richard Turlington Architects took a holistic approach to elevate wellness opportunities to a whole new level. We restored the entire façade without compromising the integrity of the original aesthetic with a heavy focus on improving the energy performance of the exterior skin. We also completely replaced all the antiquated electric heating and cooling systems with new, energy efficient gas-fired HVAC units. This change in the building’s energy source turned this building from a closed-down energy sink into a viable, fully occupied building.
Spatially, we focused on improving the wellness aspect of this building because it serves a patient population of up to 120, playing a supporting role that extends beyond the tenets of traditional psychological treatment. In short, we pushed far more daylight into the depths of this large and historically introverted building. For instance, the interior main lobby is a social gathering place. We stretched the dark-ceilinged truncated drum into a powerful two-story cylinder topped by a huge glass skylight. We added a new thermal glass enclosure for a multipurpose room, extending the building into the landscape and balancing the transparency of the pool pavilion. When complete, the lobby served as a rotating art display space, yoga room, small meeting room, and buffet server for large gatherings.
In the gymnasium, we replaced the deteriorated Kalwall translucent panels with all new, fully transparent clerestory windows that flooded this large space with natural light and allow occupants to see the trees and sky from inside. Brightening this room totally re-energized its importance to campus life.
We also added a gift shop to act as a retail anchor for all the patients. Although the gift shop is only 400 square feet, this is an example of how Richard Turlington Architects took a tiny space and made it an important wellness component for the hospital. We thoroughly changed the character of the existing community room by stripping the walls back to clean surfaces and then adding bright colors and introducing a suspended glass lantern lighting system. Additionally, we improved the acoustics and replaced the original flooring with new hardwood.
Our holistic design approach left no surface untouched. We replaced all the old, dark wood with large expanses of bright maple, new stone tile flooring, and bright wallscolors. The result is a building full of fun and brightness that facilitates the joy of movement and promotes informal social interaction and spaces for structured seminars.