Lexington Clinic Presents a Contrasting Aesthetic

Last spring, Lexington Clinic opened its newest facility on South Broadway, which replaced its flagship facility that had been serving the community since 1957. The $30 million, 116,000-square-foot facility is designed for a patient-friendly care experience with large waiting areas and exam rooms, comfortable furnishings and ample natural light. The new facility provides the area’s residents to a variety of health care specialties and services in a centralized location.

Functional Arrangement

Johnson Early Architects, Lexington, designed the building as two main barns, or wings, which house the clinical and administrative spaces with a public corridor in between. The corridor provides both connection as well as a degree of separation.

Daniel Thornberry, AIA, associate architect at Johnson Early Architects, says the overall design was driven primarily by the arrangement of functions found within, and the need to use the structural system efficiently to meet budgetary goals.

The building’s superstructure is comprised of a conventional steel frame with a regular column grid. “As such,” Thornberry says, “the design team utilized this simple grid to inform an arrangement of the interior spaces that maximized spatial efficiency within the building footprint, was easily navigable by patients/staff, and which grouped spaces that had similar or symbiotic functions.”

The smaller building houses the main lobby, administration areas and some of the clinical spaces that have the highest amount of patient load. From the main lobby, guests can access the check-in/check-out areas located in the central corridor and act as a filter for patients into the larger clinical wing, which houses the remaining clinical, medical imaging and lab spaces.

Located on a main corridor, the site is highly visible but also constricted due to the location of an existing Ambulatory Surgery Center building, parking areas and surrounding residential neighborhoods including a golf course. “These restrictions greatly predetermined the building location on the site with the massive linear shapes determining the orientation,” Thornberry says. “To minimize traffic disruption along the main corridor, the entry was positioned away from it to allow for traffic to filter to the entry through multiple points rather than a main entrance drive.”

Contrasting Colors

The building is wrapped in an entirely metal façade with contrasting colors from Innovative Metals Co. (IMETCO), Norcross, Ga. As Thornberry explains, Kentucky is known both for tobacco and horse barns, and the facility’s shape mimic those prototypical forms, providing a visual connection to the local vernacular. “Black is primarily used for tobacco barns and white for traditional horse barns,” he explains. “The additional use of gray was to provide a balance between the stark contrasts of the white/black barns.”

For the project, IMETCO supplied 46,000 square feet of its 24-gauge Series 300 galvanized metal roof and wall panels in Minneapolis-based Sherwin-Williams Coil Coatings’ Fluropon coating in Solar White and Matte Black. IMETCO also supplied 15,000 square feet of its IntelliScreen rainscreen system with IntelliWrap SA air and water barrier; 2-inch Rockwool Insulation from Rockwool, Milton, Ontario, Canada; IntelliFrame vented hats; and both Series 300 and Latitude wall panels. Merchant & Evans Inc., Burlington, N.J., supplied 12,420 square feet of its 0.40-inch aluminum B1515 R Batten 18-inch wall panels in Sherwin-Williams’ Fluropon coating in Solar White, which are installed over IMETCO’s Intelliscreen rainscreen system.

Additionally, the project includes 10,000 square feet of IMETCO’s 0.040-inch aluminum Latitude wall panels in Sherwin-William’s Fluropon coating in Charcoal. Burnett Roofing, Lexington, was the installer. At the entrances and interiors, K&B Drywall LLC, Lexington, installed 9,600 square feet of IMETCO’s 0.05-inch aluminum Latitude ceiling panels with Sherwin-Williams’ Fluropon coating in Honey Walnut Wood Grain. IMETCO supplied a custom framing system for the interior ceiling panels.

Thornberry notes that the standing seam, batten profiles and horizontal reveals are all material languages found in the surrounding area. “They also provided the best solution for long-term durability and speed of installation,” he says. “A modular, prefinished building system minimized installation times as the panels were able to be installed quickly and did not require additional finishing or touch up after installation was completed, unlike other materials such as cementitious panel or siding systems. Lastly, the overall visual effect is impressive on such a large scale; the metal panels provided render-like crisp and clean lines that would be much harder to achieve using other systems.”

By working with IMETCO, the architects were able to design a cost-effective wood-like ceiling. “We utilized an exterior soffit panel with a wood grain paint finish to achieve the look of a linear ceiling but at a fraction of the cost,” explains Thornberry. “Not only did the manufacturer provide a solution using off-the-shelf items but they were able to custom cut mini perforations into the panels to aid in sound absorption, all at half the cost of a linear wood ceiling system and within extreme time constraints.”

Timeline

The project was slated for a one-year construction amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, requiring the building systems to be installed efficiently with minimal need for additional finishing. “On top of that, the detailing was critical,” Thornberry explains. “While the shapes appear very simplistic, achieving this aesthetic on such a large scale was a challenge. A symbiotic relationship with the metal panel manufacturer was crucial in arriving at solutions to meet the design team’s needs.”