Pimara Paul Koehler, along with our partner firm PK Associates, is serving as structural engineer for this 408,000 GSF replacement hospital developed in collaboration with the White Mountain Apache Tribe. The new tribal-operated facility is being constructed on the 14-acre site of the existing hospital. The project includes a rooftop heliport, Central Utility Plant, EMS Building, Facilities Building, and Pump house. The hospital is envisioned as a destination offering both Western medicine and time-honored traditional healing practices, reflected in the Traditional Healing Structure. The building’s flowing curves and rammed earth walls at the main entrance and chapel reinforce this relationship to place and tradition. Structurally, this project requires precise engineering to balance aesthetics, performance, and constructability. The structure cantilevers more than 20 feet in two directions. In the terraced Courtyard Plaza, which sits atop an underground connecting corridor between buildings, slender steel columns branch off from the normal column grid in a purposefully organic pattern intended to mimic trees in a forest. Renderings courtesy of SmithGroup.