Cleveland Clinic and CWRU need the best from Lord Norman Foster as he develops design for Health Education Campus
Presented by The Cleveland Plain Dealer - Steven Litt
On Tuesday, the Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University unveiled the first highly detailed renderings of their planned Health Education Campus, which is being designed by Lord Norman Foster of London.
The Clinic and CWRU plan to break ground this spring for the 485,000-square-foot building on a highly visible, 11-acre site along East 93rd Street between Euclid and Chester Avenues, at the gateway to the 165-acre Clinic campus.
Having a building by Foster will add an important architectural voice to Cleveland. A native of Manchester who served as a Royal Air Force pilot in the 1950s, Foster has been showered by honors throughout his 50-year career, including his knighthood and the Pritzker Prize, architecture's equivalent of the Nobel.
His credits include some of the world's most impressive and astonishing contemporary buildings and structures, including the bone-thin Millau Viaduct in France; the renovated Reichstag in Berlin, whose glassy dome has become a symbol of transparent government; and the HSBC Tower in Hong Kong, which displays its elegant, earthquake-resistant steel structure outside its glass skin.
The Clinic/CWRU project will be a fresh sign of Cleveland's evolution as a postindustrial city that mixes gritty authenticity with state-of-the-art innovation and lively, cosmopolitan urbanism – in neighborhoods where growth is happening.