High-tech given a human touch
By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer
The new $150 million University of Hawai'i medical school set to open next year in Kaka'ako will be equal parts high-tech and high touch, school officials and architects said yesterday.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
First, there's the technological side.
The media received a tour of the University of Hawai'i's new medical school in Kaka'ako yesterday. The first part of the $150 million complex is set to open to students in April. The high-tech facility with "flexible laboratories" also includes touches of Hawaiiana.
Think of students "operating" on half-million-dollar computerized mannequins, complete with their own heartbeat, breathing and circulating blood. Think of an energy-saving air-cooling system powered by saltwater pumped from 800 feet below the building. Imagine the latest in "flexible laboratories," individually tailored to specific research purposes.
All of it sounds coldly scientific.
But the building will be filled with hundreds of people working on the most human of missions, saving lives. That's where the high-touch factor comes in:
Large murals in soothing blues and greens, to match the color of the waterfront park next door. An indoor-outdoor public cafe meant to serve as the school's gathering place. Large windows designed to make use of natural light. An in-house fitness center, as well as a childcare facility.
"We've designed it to be a high-tech space that's sensitive to the needs of the people inside and out," said Dr. Edwin Cadman, dean of the university's John A. Burns School of Medicine, who yesterday led a tour of the 300,000 square-foot facility built on the site of two former Agriculture Department warehouses next to the state's Kaka'ako Waterfront Park.
"We needed to make it the best teaching and research facility we could, but also wanted something that the people of Hawai'i could identify with," Cadman said.
With the first part of the new complex set to open to students in April, the medical school was still a work in progress yesterday. Wires hung exposed; carpets were half put down; dry wall was stacked, waiting for installation; pipes and conduits were out in full view.
It was easy to see the future, though, especially in what will be the first building to be finished, the 114,546 square-foot, four-story medical education center, which will house faculty and staff offices, classrooms, an auditorium, a clinical skills and simulation center (where those high-tech dummies will be operated on), a medical library and the cafŽ, which will be run by students from Kapi'olani Community College.
"By May, we'll have the first graduating class here," Cadman said.
A separate biosciences building, dedicated to research projects, will open by August, he said. It's there that UH scientists will find the latest in laboratory facilities, with each room capable of being reconfigured to suit individual needs.
"We looked at labs all over the country and borrowed the best features," said Walter Muraoka, the project's leader for Architect Hawai'i, which came up with the design.
Outside, the human and Hawaiian touches include glass etchings of 'ape and other Hawaiian healing plants, cast-concrete panels with tapa-styled renderings of rain, rivers and a human DNA strand, and landscaping that includes a native Hawaiian garden. There was even an effort to save an existing sausage tree that's now nestled between the two main buildings.
While the research facility will be heavily secured, the medical education building will be open to the public, Muraoka said. An airy entryway, with a four-story open stairway and a large mural climbing all the way to the ceiling, will be the centerpiece of the building, leading to a new medical library and cafeteria.
"This is a state building and we want the public to come and see what we're doing here," Cadman said.
An international bioscience conference expected to draw some 500 participants has been scheduled to celebrate the grand opening of the campus. While a reception will be held in the new building, the conference will be at the convention center.
Reach Mike Leidemann at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.
