Center for Brain Health
Gehry Partners, LLP

July 26, 2010 /

Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

Photo © Michael Webb

The Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health is located on a prominent "gateway" site of the 61 acre Symphony Park development in downtown Las Vegas, at the corner of Grand Central Parkway and Bonneville Avenue.

The building is an uneven stack of blocks anchoring waves of steel and glass. The research facilities, clinical facilities, and offices are located within a four-story block that has been articulated as a series of offset rectangular shapes in white plaster and glass.

While not in the immediate view of the project from the corner of the site, this is the actual front of the building serving as employee, patient and public entrance.

Photo: Meaghan Lloyd

Photo © Michael Webb

The more public building uses are detached from the medical facilities across a dramatic covered trellis courtyard near the corner of the site. These program functions are entered via an exterior breezeway through the medical office building.

Photo © Michael Webb

The Activities Center is contained within an expressive metal and glass form that is articulated as a curvilinear metal facade and roof with punched-window/skylight openings.

Photo © Michael Webb

Photo © Michael Webb

The center is intended to provide facilities that bridge all aspects of patient care, research, and education, which include an outpatient clinic, a research clinic, neuro-imaging suites, a reference library, a small Museum of the Mind, a multi-purpose activities/banquet center for 450 people, a catering kitchen, as well as office space for the American Alzheimer's Association, the Huntington's Disease Association, the Keep Memory Alive Foundation, and the American Parkinson's Disease Association.

Public functions held in the Activities Centers serve to generate revenue for the Keep Memory Alive Foundation, The Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health and the campus medical mission as a whole. The Activities Center is flanked by simple blocks of the Kitchen and Museum of the Mind which are ancillary functions of the Activities Center.

Sketch courtesy Gehry Partners, LLP