The new facility meets all U.S. standards, codes and regulations and includes 80 inpatient beds, four extended post-anesthesia care unit (critical care) beds, and a full complement of surgical and imaging services, physical rehabilitation, and outpatient clinics.

The inpatient beds are separated into four small units, each with age-appropriate play spaces and support services, and are situated for optimal views of the outdoors. The outpatient clinic is broken into three areas, enabling staff to accommodate the largest number of patients efficiently, while not intimidating small children and anxious families.

The design team was challenged to create a technologically advanced building that would be welcoming to patients and that would capitalize on the vibrant environment of Mexico City with an aesthetic that follows the Mexican Modernist style and fits the contextual design of the surrounding community. The three-story building is designed to complement the low scale residential neighborhood to the south, utilizing the rich texture and color of local Mexican marble in a modular pattern, and featuring  larger-than-normal windows, which further reduce the scale of the exterior. The building is clad in locally-produced marble, weathering more attractively than manufactured materials. The building’s blocky massing is reminiscent of traditional Mexican architecture, but the detailing is clearly contemporary, with windows of varying sizes and shapes providing ample views.

Because the site is located on lava stone, the project team confronted unusual geotechnical challenges such as the filling of air pockets in the lava stone. Through close collaboration with Mexican design and construction partners, the team successfully overcame such obstacles, as well as meeting all requirements for metric and bilingual documentation,  and coping with the unreliability of much of the city's infrastructure and the limited availability of some construction materials.

Project Information
Building Owner:		Shriners Organization
Building Location:		Mexico City MEXICO
Project Type:		New Construction
Principal Building Function:		Orthopedic hospital for children
Project Delivery Method:		General Contractor
Project Timeline		Mar 2003 Construction Start May 2006 Completion Last known status: Completed
Project Cost:		$76,000,000
Construction Cost:		$45,856,000
Cost Per Sq. Ft:		$147
		About These Cost Figures
Building Information
Project Includes:		Atrium Daycare Healthcare Healthcare: Imaging Healthcare: Surgery Nursing
Total GSF:		311,000
Project Team
Architect		The S/L/A/M Collaborative
Engineer - MEP		Smith, Seckman, Reid, Inc.
Profile Created 01/05/2007
Last Updated 10/12/2007
About the Reported Cost Figures The cost figures reported are supplied by the firms that submitted these projects for publication, which in most cases are the designers or builders. Whereas these sources are intimately familiar with their projects, they may not be fully aware of the owners' finally-realized and recorded costs. In some cases, costs are truly and completely accounted for, and in others they represent a near approximation of the final costs. Costs have not been adjusted for year of construction, nor has any attempt been made to make regional cost adjustments. Further, costs are not comparable on any kind of detailed standard costing model. Hence, it is possible for the cost of one building to include a steam boiler, while the cost of a comparable building might not include the boiler, if steam is being supplied from an already existing campus grid. Or, in another case, a building might include excess boiler capacity to supply steam to another building. Some submittals include fees or unusual site improvements as part of the construction costs, which others do not.