BRUNSWICK, ME – Ground was broken today for the 35,392 s.f. expansion of Mid Coast Hospital, in a 13-shovel ceremony led by hospital president Herb Paris.

The project, which adds 25 percent to the size of the original hospital, will give Mid Coast a new and expanded Emergency Department and 18 private patient rooms in the hospital’s medical surgical unit. The current emergency room will be renovated to provide additional space fo rhte hospital’s diagnostics center.

The expansion will continue Shepley Bulfinch’s design of the original hospital and medical office building, completed in 2001.

The expansion is scheduled to open in 2010.

BOSTON, MA – Harvard Business School celebrated the newly renovated Gallatin Hall the old-fashioned way – with an all-night party. As the HBS Bulletin notes, what better way to “road test” a dorm than to invite 73 friends over to sleep in its rooms and test its light switches, windows, and shower heads?

The gut renovation that stripped Gallatin down to its brick walls and concrete slabs transformed the McKim Mead and White building’s warren-like accommodations into the envy of the campus. Gallatin Hall is now ADA compliant, with universal access through a newly restored courtyard, teak rocking chairs and benches lining its elegant brick terrace. A glass-paneled second-floor footbridge ...[more]

Good design means that universal design doesn’t have to be obvious, says Shepley Bulfinch project architect Tricia DeLauri in “Balancing Tradition” in the March 2008 issue of College Planning and Management magazine.

She and Sara Elsa-Beech, project manager for the recently completed renovation of Charles Pratt Hall at Amherst College, discuss the challenges and opportunities when ensuring ADA compliance for historic renovation projects.