Healthcare Design - December 2023 - 27

© EDWARD CARUSO PHOTOGRAPHY
M
ORE THAN 100 years after Coney Island Hospital
opened in Brooklyn, N.Y., the safety-net facility had
to evacuate 272 patients in eight hours as Hurricane
Irene made landfall in August 2011. A little more than
a year later, the hospital was significantly affected
when Superstorm Sandy hit the region, flooding the
emergency room, damaging critical technology and
infrastructure, and forcing a complete evacuation. " We're about threequarters
of a mile away from the beachfront, " says Svetlana Lipyanskaya,
CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals/South Brooklyn Health. " When Sandy
hit, the main street in front of us became a river ... there were fish in our
emergency department. "
The Coney Island Hospital campus, part of NYC Health + Hospitals/
South Brooklyn Health system, houses the closest hospital to 875,000
residents in the southern part of Brooklyn, making it an important asset to
the community. When it took several months to fully reopen following the
damage from Sandy, Lipyanskaya says the health system realized it needed
a " much more resilient campus for this hospital and for this community
going into the future. "
In 2014, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) allocated
a $923 million grant to NYC Health + Hospitals/South Brooklyn Health
that included a new hospital tower to house critical services, including a
second-floor emergency department, imaging, pharmacy, labs, and vital
mechanical services, such as emergency power generators, heating and
cooling systems, and water pumps. The project would also build a new
1,720-foot flood wall to protect critical services on the existing campus,
which was renamed the South Brooklyn Health campus in 2023, from future
extreme weather. " We serve an incredibly important role in the community
and it's vital that we're able to keep our doors open, " Lipyanskaya
says. " So resilience was the biggest factor in the planning of this building. "
BUILDING RESILIENCY
Opened in May, the new 11-story building was named the Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Hospital in honor of the Supreme Court Justice, who served from
1993 until her death in 2020, and was a south Brooklyn native. And while
resiliency was the highest priority on the project, John Flanagan, senior
project architect and project manager at NBBJ (New York), says another
challenge was " how do we make this building safe but not a fortress and ensure
it's still approachable. "
A requirement of the project funding was that the entire 13-acre campus
would be protected to the FEMA-prescribed 100-year flood level. To balance
the need for safety and code compliance with creating a welcoming and
approachable hospital for the diverse residential neighborhood, the project
team employed a variety of planning and design strategies. For example, instead
of a monolithic concrete flood wall around the campus, the structure
incorporates self-rising flood barriers and large sliding gates, while on the
The hospital's first-floor main lobby
offers a welcoming setting with a
double-height, stepped ceiling and
gradient lighting. A staircase and
nearby elevators provide access to
clinical services housed on floors 2-11.
DECEMBER 2023
27
Healthcare Design - December 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Healthcare Design - December 2023
