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The Center For Care & Discovery is the flagship of the University of Chicago Medicine’s Hyde Park campus. Rafael Viñoly Architects of New York, in collaboration with Cannon Design of Chicago, designed the 10-story hospital, which was completed in 2013. Facilities and architecture are first-rate. But when doctors, staff, and visitors need a cup of coffee or a light lunch, the hospital cafeteria may not be their first choice.

To give them another, less institutional option, a 6,500-square-foot food hall recently opened on the ground floor. The narrow, elongated space, whose only obvious asset was enclosure on three sides by Viñoly’s elegant curtain wall, formerly housed retail food and beverage operations that had become dated and underutilized. It is now a serene and luminous café, carefully designed and crafted to give little hint of the bustling, lifesaving medical enterprise above.

The architects of this welcome amenity are DAAM (a playful acronym for Design, Architecture, Art and Making), a 2021 Design Vanguard. Principals Elyse Agnello and Alex Shelly got the commission through an RFP, issued by Health Hospitality Partners (HHP) and brought to Chicago-based DAAM by Jennifer Ly and James Leng of Figure Design, a San Francisco firm that collaborated on the project. “Their official title was design consultant, but that understates their role,” says Agnello. “They were coauthors, and worked hand-in-hand with us on all aspects during schematics and design development.”

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The narrow space includes dining counters that incorporate framed, translucent glazed planters (1, 2, and top of page). Photos © James Leng

“The long, linear nature of the site was one of the first challenges we sought to address,” says Shelly. The architects responded to this constraint with a strategy of skillful spatial layering, organizing the skinny space as parallel zones that accommodate back-of-house functions in a poché area along the rear wall, seating along the glazed perimeter, and, in between, service stations for food and drink. This allows for easy wayfinding, which is important to the tenants, along with flexible circulation and seating. All of this had to be coordinated with a dense network of existing plumbing.

The client’s brief called for a friendly atmosphere distinct from the clinical environment of the hospital, part of HHP’s mission, according to Agnello. “They aspire to make health care more hospitable, which is a goal we could really get behind. Materiality, tactility, natural light, and a sense of warmth felt like a great inroad on that.”

To achieve these objectives, DAAM deployed a limited but sophisticated material palette in a rigorous, place-defining manner; 36-inch-square tiles of warm gray, matte-finish terrazzo cover the floor, with a larger aggregate delineating lounge areas. The same tiles also clad the vertical face of service counters, which are topped by polished slabs of composite quartz in a matching color. This terrazzo datum continues as a wainscot below board-and-batten paneling of rift-cut white oak, which wraps the service areas along the back edge. The panels align with the tiles, creating an abstract grid that gives the room a modular rhythm. A linear ceiling system in a similar wood clads a duct-concealing soffit above seating at the perimeter. The subtle and consistent aesthetic provides a unifying neutral backdrop for three different food and beverage operators.

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The long, glazed north perimeter wall (3) gives way to a food-service wall where terrazzo acts as a wainscot below board-andbatten paneling (4 & 5). Photos © James Leng (3 & 4), Kim Rodgers (5)

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A variety of seating accommodates approximately 150 people. Custom-designed millwork of white oak includes benches integrated with columns along the curtain wall and dining counters that incorporate screens of framed translucent glazing and grass-filled planters. These align with a nearby paneled wall to bisect the west dining hall area, separating the queuing and service areas to the south from the built-in seating along the perimeter to the north. They also provide privacy between diners at counters and tables. Pendant globe light fixtures and reflective coatings on interior columns impart a warm glow, which, according to Shelly, “further softens and scales the space.” The overall effect is surprisingly luxe.

Click graphic to enlarge