A Cohesive Campus for Care
South Shore University Hospital’s new bed tower will bring advanced inpatient and surgical care to Suffolk County while honoring Bay Shore’s coastal character.
South Shore University Hospital Pavilion
Bay Shore, NY
For more than a century, South Shore University Hospital (SSUH) has served Suffolk County’s South Shore communities with quality care and clinical excellence. As the population grew, the hospital recognized the need to expand its facilities to match its vision for a comprehensive care campus.
Initially a community hospital, SSUH is undergoing a significant transformation. Investments in programs and infrastructure have strengthened its clinical and technological capabilities. To continue this major transformation into a comprehensive care campus, the team developed a master plan that expanded care capacity, enhanced the patient experience, and created a sustainable and resilient medical facility.
The centerpiece of this plan is a new six-story, 219,000-square-foot pavilion with 90 universal inpatient rooms, 10 operating rooms, 3 endoscopy suites, and expanded surgical services. The addition also features a two-story lobby garden, upgraded circulation pathways, and a 600-space parking garage.
Clear, Intuitive Sequencing of Movement
The pavilion bridges the existing and new by breaking down building scale to create a clear hospitality-style arrival experience while introducing transparency at various levels that provide access to natural landscapes and views.
The hospital’s front door was relocated to the new pavilion to unify the campus. The team designed a large entry canopy that stretches across the hospital’s main drive, creating both a striking entry and a covered drop-off. As you enter the new building, visitors are greeted by a large two-story garden with a wide connecting corridor to the existing hospital’s circulation spine.
As part of the master plan, the existing main entry will be repurposed for a dedicated Mother-Baby hospital entry. This repositioning enhances the Mother-Baby program, reduces walking distance for expecting mothers, and provides a hospitality-inspired convenience for patients on the SSUH campus.
A Seaside Garden
The pavilion’s two-story garden is the heart of the building and is a place for escape and quiet reflection, enhanced by rich colors and textures, illuminated by a grand skylight above. The soft organic forms of the interior design and exterior landscape contrast with the orthogonal building form and present a variety of spaces with different levels of privacy to suit patient and family needs during their time at the pavilion.
The project’s coastal location inspired the seaside design theme. It is re-interpreted by curvilinear shapes in the ceiling, screen walls, terrazzo flooring, unique custom-designed elevator walls, and a sculptural wall cladding reminiscent of waves stretching the height of the two-story garden.
A Patient-Centered Design
Patient rooms are situated to take advantage of uninterrupted views of the surrounding coastal town. Hospitality concepts inspire the design and provide a non-institutional ambiance enhanced by a unique palette with intense accent colors balanced by natural-look materials such as woodgrain paneling, porcelain tile, carpet, and resilient flooring. The headwall design incorporates an abstract background image that brings genuine visual interest and creates a non-institutional aesthetic.
The patient rooms and units employ a universal model design, meaning they can support either Med/Surg or ICU-level care. EwingCole worked with the clinical team to develop the flexible room design. This inherent flexibility enables the clinical team to transition one patient room or floor to an ICU level of care during construction documentation without impacting the schedule, illustrating the benefits of this planning decision early in the building’s lifespan.
Pandemic Preparedness
Building systems have been designed to change quickly in response to pandemics. The mechanical systems for the pavilion allow patient floors to switch to negative pressure through the use of building automation, allowing for a complete ventilation purge of the entire building. All patient rooms incorporate a view window and a remote E-ICU system to minimize the need for staff to enter the patient room. The double-height lobby space includes concealed supplemental power, enabling the space to be utilized for surge overflow beds if required.
Meet the design team
