Even as Chicago ponders the fate of one medical icon, Northwestern's Prentice Women's Hospital, a 1975 structure slated for the wrecking ball, it welcomes another, The Tower, centerpiece of a 10-year, $1-billion overhaul of Rush University Medical Center on the city's west side.
Like the cloverleaf-shaped Prentice, Rush's new acute- and critical-care center is an exercise in form flowing from function, in this case an initiative to decentralize nursing by organizing patient floors in quadrants. Perched atop a rectangular base, the result is a curvilinear structure that, in plan, resembles a butterfly.