Brigham and Women’s Hospital Welcomes First Patients at New Facility

The Building for Transformative Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts, with its innovative construction and state-of-the-art research and clinical space, welcomed its first patients on Oct. 3. The new facility will bring together leading clinicians and scientists to promote, collaborate and advance care for patients suffering from neurologic, orthopaedic and rheumatologic conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis.

Key elements of the new building include:

• 383,000 square feet of usable space, including research labs, clinics, an infusion suite, an imaging floor, a conference center and faculty offices.
• Five state-of-the-art MRIs, including a Magnetom Terra 7.0 Tesla MRI, the newest and most powerful MRI machine available and the first in a clinical setting in North America, installed within a year.
• The Brigham Innovation Hub, which fosters collaboration among leading experts to further enable partnerships within BWH and with the industry.
• 400 underground parking spaces, including dedicated spots for electric and low-emission vehicles, and ample bicycle parking.
• A beautiful, centralized infusion suite for patients with a wide range of diseases, from musculoskeletal injuries to rheumatoid arthritis.
• A conference center with a variety meeting spaces.
• A third-floor roof garden designed as an extension of Boston’s Emerald Necklace.
• Green design, construction and maintenance solutions to attain Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold certification. Innovative features include a cogeneration plant that will provide 80 percent of the power and steam and the adjacent building (BWH’s Shapiro Cardiovascular Center), and a 40,000 gallon cistern to capture stormwater for reuse in the mechanical systems will be installed.

All clinical teams move in before the end of October 2016; all others will be staggered. The building will be fully occupied by March 2017.

The Building for Transformative Medicine cost $475 million to build, and was supported in part by philanthropy.

The project team included NBBJ Architects as architect and Suffolk Construction as construction manager.

Photos courtesy of NBBJ/Sean Airhart.