Vivian and Seymour Milstein Family Heart Center (New York)

A 50 million dollar gift from the family of Vivian and Seymour Milstein made this heart centre possible. First conceived more than five years before it opened, it was planned together with the hospital's clinical team of cardiac surgeons, cardiologists, nurses and other specialists. Its opening was celebrated on 20 January 2010.

Vivian and Seymour Milstein had been associated with the hospital since the 1950s; Seymour Milstein chaired its board from 1989 to 1996.

Pei Cobb Freed & Partners is the architect of this six-storey building at Fort Washington Avenue and 165th Street, with daSilva Architects as associate architect; R.A. Heintges & Associates was the curtain-wall consultant. On a raised site, the building bows gently outward toward the landscape of the Hudson River and the New Jersey Palisades.

The curtain wall is a double skin. A climate wall encloses the areas where patients wait before surgery: it admits as much daylight as possible while shielding the interior from solar heat in summer and heat loss in winter. In its three-foot cavity, electronically controlled vertical vanes follow the sun, and exhaust air from the building rises through the cavity to be released at the top. To heighten the transparency, the full weight of the four-storey facade hangs from the roof on stainless steel rods. The materials are water-white glass, stainless steel, aluminium and travertine.

Inside, paintings of the Hudson River School were turned into large wall murals. The building connects on several levels to the neighbouring Milstein Hospital Building and the Herbert Irving Pavilion. It is LEED Gold certified.

The building combines care for inpatients and outpatients. It houses imaging and diagnostic services, day surgery, labs for cardiac catheterization, doctors' practice suites and critical care. Its two hybrid operating rooms, fitted with imaging equipment, allow surgical and catheter procedures to take place in a single room, and twenty new beds were added for cardiac intensive care. For teaching, the Goldstein centre for education and conferences and Daniels Auditorium have communication links to the operating rooms and catheterization labs.