Guthrie Medical Office Building

This project is the development of a completely new building as part of the City Harbor project, a larger project with several buildings intended to develop a neglected waterfront site into a vital part of the downtown community. The layout and design of the building follows LEAN principles, with on stage/off stage patient and staff interface. Among the typical infrastructure for a building of this type there are also a few systems that required more creative solutions: as a particularly environmentally-conscious community, Ithaca requires that new buildings be run without dependence on fossil fuels, so this project includes an environmentally friendly mechanical system that utilizes the thermal properties of the city’s effluent system; also, due to very poor structural quality of the soil on site, the project involves the creation of a structural system involving hundreds of deep piers along with a grade beam network to support the building.

Organized in pods, 35 exam rooms were created with the associated support spaces to accommodate flexible use by any Guthrie practice that might have office visits scheduled. Specialty practice areas were also created, including Physical therapy, ENT, optometry, endoscopy, and X-ray / nuclear imaging.

Big Idea

House multiple specialty practices on a rotating basis in a single location