Virginia Urology Center

The illustration below explains our ability for conceptualizing and staying within the parameters of the concepts of the design and budget with a project from initial user group meetings through user occupancy.

Virginia Urology Center wanted to relocate to the Stony Point area and to consolidate a number of satellite offices into one central facility to house surgery, imaging, examination, administration, and laboratory functions.  Virginia Urology joint ventured with The Greenfield Group, a developer of medical office buildings located in Nashville, Tennessee.  The Greenfield Group provided the development expertise, an ownership option for Virginia Urology, as well as property management services.  Cornerstone Architects was retained by The Greenfield Group to provide full-service architectural and interior design services for this single tenant, built-to-suit project. 

Our biggest challenge, by far, was to channel the diverse functional requirements in this multi-faceted specialty group practice into the developer's pre-conceived notion of a build-to-suit medical office building.  Juggling the program elements to fit into a pre-determined base spacing, equal stacked floor plates without compromising inter-departmental dependencies required several iterations of the concept one-line diagrams.

Working from an approved program, we conducted several design charette sessions with key administrators and physicians. Planning sessions were flexible and interactive.  We generated several options and worked in an interactive manner arriving at an approved schematic floor plan. 

Once construction documents were underway, we continued the interactive meeting process to explore the users' goals and needs for finishes, furniture and equipment.  We presented three general finish schemes for their review and selection.  Based on the finish scheme selected, we developed a complete finish and furniture scheme that is functional, pleasing, and affordable.

The project came in on budget and we attribute this to our design restraint in the back of the house. The tenant space had commodity level finishes allowing us to show better finishes in the public spaces. This approach was economical and still aesthetic.

During the eight-month construction phase, Cornerstone Architects continued meeting with the client on a regular basis. We met to review construction, answer and accommodate the users' revisions, and continued to improve and evolve the design as the users accommodated the new technologies of digital imaging, wireless network, and expanding information technology systems.

 Throughout the entire process, the users complimented us on our ability to listen, to build a consensus among a diverse group of physicians, and the willingness to be flexible enough to accommodate their diverse needs.