Clinica Sierra Vista Bakersfield Comprehensive Care Center

PROJECT NARRATIVE

This 49,000-square-foot tenant improvement establishes the organization's main hub of operations in the region. With multiple specialties housed under one roof and convenient access to a hospital directly across the street, the new facility provides patients with a comprehensive spectrum of care across its first two floors within a new three-story building. Women's health comprises the largest component, along with pediatrics, dental, optometry, specialty care, urgent care, behavioral health, counseling, lab, meds, and support spaces. Based on a week-long 3P conducted early in the design process, the client team opted for modular components and demountable walls to create an onstage/offstage layout that can adapt as needs change. Because of the building's programmatic density, wayfinding became an essential design element; alongside textual cues and instructions in both English and Spanish, bold colors, letters, and imagery encourage effective navigation, and in the pediatric department, signage engages young patients by using animals in a forest to guide the way.

In addition to clinical spaces, the building contains shared medical visit rooms and conference rooms to host educational events, and with so many programmatic elements already at play, administrative space was at a premium; in response, private offices were eliminated in favor of shared workspaces with glass-enclosed phone booths for private conversations. Design meetings began in early 2020, just as COVID-19 escalated in the US, and nearly the entirety of the design and construction administration process happened remotely, with early-day meetings accommodating providers across multiple disciplines and virtual walk-throughs allowing staff and stakeholders to visualize the space. The use of modular walls alongside a new vacuum plumbing system required close coordination between all trades to integrate the two specialized systems successfully.