The original building housing the Cedars-Sinai, Playa Vista Office and Urgent Care clinic was not designed for patient care. The project team adapted the former office building’s simple rectangular shape to create a patient-centered clinical space.

Surrounded by restaurants, shops and a movie theater, the 31,532-sq-ft clinic was built on the upper levels of an unassuming outdoor mall building. Its structural building columns, narrow floor plates and varying connections with the attached garage made it difficult to design efficient and intuitive flow between spaces.

“One of the more interesting challenges of the project was taking the existing long narrow floor plate, geared toward individual commercial tenant spaces, and reimagining it as a cohesive patient-centered clinical space,” said Janet Pangman, principal with ZGF Architects. “Our design achieved this by creating clear wayfinding and an inviting interior environment that belongs to the Playa Vista neighborhood.”

The design result is a U-shaped layout featuring a southern corridor with patient areas and a northern corridor that provides a path of travel for materials, staff and patients. The team originally planned to complete all three levels at once, but the owner requested that each of the clinic levels be delivered on an accelerated timeline. This meant the urgent care level needed to be finished two months earlier than planned, followed by the primary care and ob/gyn and pediatric levels.

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