A gateway to the Anaheim medical campus, the 16,500-sq-ft radiation-therapy building offers a calming environment to cancer patients through its unique shape, exposure to natural light, interior layout and materials.

The single-story structure houses three linear accelerators, CT imaging room, exam rooms, doctors’ offices and support space for patients and staff. Unlike traditional basement locations, which prevent radiation scatter, each linear accelerator room has extensive natural lighting, a vertical living wall of plants and a Zen garden outside, project officials say.

“We located the linear accelerator rooms above ground to offer patients a relaxed setting during their procedure,” says K.R. Jaggu Jagannath, project director for Kaiser Permanente.

Locating the rooms above ground challenged the team to design an enclosure that offered adequate shielding to mitigate radiation scatter. Because the density of the radiation from the accelerators varies at different locations, a poured concrete wall with varying densities would have been too costly and time-consuming to construct, Jagannath says.

Instead, the team designed “the enclosure with prefabricated concrete blocks of different densities to meet the shielding requirements,” he says. “The blocks were individually designed and installed in place like building blocks.” In addition to meeting the shielding requirements, this approach also optimized the construction schedule for the project.

A segmented curtain wall comprises 28 different frit patterns simulating a forest. “No single panel of the curtain wall was similar to another in its height or the frits that make up the graphic,” Jagannath says. “The team developed a program to offer dense graphics to depict the trees and less intense graphics for clear views through windows.” The design-build glazing contractor produced specific shop drawings for each of the panels and had the panels verified for accuracy prior to shipping them to the site.

Completed in March, the project is pursuing LEED Gold certification. 

Kaiser Permanente Anaheim Radiation Oncology Center

Anaheim

Key Players
Owner Kaiser Permanente
Lead Design Firm CannonDesign
Contractor Turner Construction Co.
Structural Engineer John A. Martin & Associates
Civil Engineer RBF Consulting
MEP Engineer Mazzetti
Electrical Engineer dpb Engineers Inc.
Curtain Wall Bagatelos Architectural Glass Systems