The University of Houston has opened its Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine, one of the first new medical schools in Houston in nearly 50 years.
Over a 16-month period, a Building Team led by architect of record and engineer PageSoutherlandPage, designer The S/L/A/M Collective, and general contractor Vaughn Construction collaborated on this $90 million project, which now serves nearly 500 medical students. The three-story, 128,400-sf College sits on 43 acres of the university’s campus, and is the first building designed for the university’s new medical district.
This is also the first LEED Gold building on the university’s campus. Energy performance is optimized through features that reduce indoor water use, energy demand responsiveness, passive daylighting and more. Others include healthy materials selection, including the use of oak boards reclaimed from the site itself. The project includes its own 6,300-sf central utility plant.
Multi-floor Learning
![The new College of Medicine building offers learning spaces on several floors.](/sites/default/files/inline-images/UH_COM_INTERIOR.jpg)
Among the College of Medicine’s features is a Sky Box Lecture Hall on the second floor with a 128-seat capacity, and four seminar rooms that can accommodate another 50 people for presentations. Also on the second floor is a simulation center, made up of clinical skills exam rooms and simulated hospital rooms. One of the three Sim Flex Labs supplies acute simulations such as trauma, operating, and intensive care scenarios.
On the first floor, an Active Learning Classroom and Wellness Studio open the building to the public, where students can host community events and gain valuable hands-on interaction.
The College is named after the family of Tilman J. Fertitta, the businessman who owns the Houston Rockets NBA team, casinos that include The Golden Nugget, and is chairman of the University of Houston’s Board of Regents.
In a letter to faculty and staff, the College’s Founding Dean Stephen Spann, who is the university’s Vice President for Medical Affairs, stated that the university is taking “a bold and fresh new approach to medical education” by focusing on a key contributor to poor health: a shortage in primary care doctors. The College’s mission is to train doctors to prevent and improve poor health, not just treat it, and to help eliminate healthcare disparities in urban and rural areas.
The university estimates that in the medical college’s first decade of operations, it will return $4.13 for every dollar spent on it, and add $376.6 million in total revenue to greater Houston.
Related Stories
| Oct 30, 2012
Lord, Aeck & Sargent announces four student life facility wins
Projects recognize the architecture firm’s expertise on a nationwide basis.
| Oct 4, 2012
2012 Reconstruction Awards Gold Winner: Wake Forest Biotech Place, Winston-Salem, N.C.
Reconstruction centered on Building 91.1, a historic (1937) five-story former machine shop, with its distinctive façade of glass blocks, many of which were damaged. The Building Team repointed, relocated, or replaced 65,869 glass blocks.
| Sep 19, 2012
Modular, LEED-Gold Certified Dormitory Accommodates Appalachian State University Growth
By using modular construction, the university was able to open a dorm a full year earlier than a similar dorm built at the same time with traditional construction.
| Sep 6, 2012
CPPI awarded $30.3 million contract for University of Florida’s Harrell Medical Education Building
The specialized interdisciplinary learning environment will serve as a focal point for integration and program development for all primary care educational activities in the College of Medicine.
| Sep 5, 2012
Skanska tops out residence hall complex at the University of Delaware
Construction firm achieves structural milestone for $71 million student housing expansion project.
| Aug 30, 2012
John S Clark Co. completes teaching lab at UNC Wilmington
Three-story building provides offices, classrooms, and labs.
| Aug 7, 2012
Pioneering revival
Financial setbacks didn’t stop this Building Team from transforming the country’s first women’s medical school into a new home for college students.
| Aug 7, 2012
Shedding light on the arts
Renovating Pietro Belluschi’s Juilliard School opens the once-cloistered institution to its Upper West Side community.
| Aug 7, 2012
McCarthy tops out LEED Platinum-designed UCSD Health Sciences Biomedical Research Facility
New laboratory will enable UCSD to recruit and accommodate preeminent faculty.
| Jul 25, 2012
KBE Building renovates UConn dining hall
Construction for McMahon Dining Hall will be completed in September 2012.