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Home at last
In the summer of 2004, the UT School of Nursing moved into its first permanent home on the Texas Medical Center campus. Our building, located at 6901 Bertner Avenue, adjacent to the UT School of Public Health and across the street from M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, is not just an academic building or a medical building converted to our use. It is one of Houston’s first true green buildings and a welcome addition to the architectural diversity of the Texas Medical Center. The building (designed by BNIM Architects of Houston and Lake|Flato Architects of San Antonio) has been honored by the American Institute of Architects with local and regional awards for its imaginative, energy-saving and forward-thinking design of this building.
The UT School of Nursing building was designed with the future in mind. Not just the future of the school, but the future needs of incoming classes of nursing students, graduate students, nurse educators and nurse researchers. Our home will enhance our community outreach programs and pivotal nursing research programs in concert with other UT Health Science Center schools and institutes.
As the largest green building in the entire Southwest, the $57 million structure (total project cost) features a leading-edge auditorium that accommodates 200 people, a clinical skills lab with 32 beds, 12 individual patient rooms, an entire floor devoted to nursing research with laboratory space built to our specifications, a sleep lab, student government offices, a student lounge, a bookstore, a café, acoustically-dampened study areas and enough class-room space to seat 880 students at any one time.
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“The educational environment here is one of the most nurturing and supportive I’ve ever encountered. Our professors take an amazing interest in their students.”
Susan Bankston RN, BSN
Currently a student in the MSN to DSN Program
The healthier the environment, the better for all involved – students, faculty, patients and the world we all share.
But what makes it green? A green building strives to be a self-sustaining building that limits harmful by-products from either the construction process or conventional daily occupancy and use. In addition, green architecture delivers energy savings and reduced water usage through optimal use of rainwater collected in cisterns for irrigation and waste-water purposes as well as special exterior and interior wall treatments that offer higher insulation rates and prevent the growth of mold and mildew. Innovative use of natural daylight, high-performance window glazing and window shades, serve to reduce energy consumption. Moreover, 77 percent of our construction materials, including concrete, wood, masonry, metal, furniture, fixtures and equipment, metal casework, a canopy and a skylight, contain recycled content or have been re-used; materials with low volatile organic com-pounds such as paints, fabrics and furniture were used to provide increased indoor air quality for building occupants. Finally, 49 percent of the Portland cement used in the concrete in our building was replaced with fly ash, a power generation by-product, that when used in concrete, results in a significant reduction of carbon dioxide emissions into the environment.
In our opinion, the practice of nursing extends well past our responsibilities for caring for the health of our patients. It also means that we need to care for the environment in which we work and learn. The healthier the environment, the better – and a green environment such as the one created at the UT School of Nursing is healthier for all involved – our students, our faculty, the patients they care for and the environment in which we co-exist.
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