The ‘greening’ of a hospital

Natural elements and light play a role in a patient’s healing and the design at the Francsican St. Francis Health - Indianapolis campus takes that into account.
To help make a bit of the outdoors available to patients, the hospital is creating four rooftop gardens, totaling 19,800 square feet. Located on the second and third floor roofs of the new patient tower, the rooftop gardens will occupy approximately 35 percent of the new roof.

The purpose of the gardens is to promote an aesthetically pleasing environment that contributes to each patient’s healing process during their stay at Franciscan St. Francis Health. Ornamental perennials of different sizes and colors, along with a variety of plants will decorate the rooftops.

Most patients will have a view of the roof and the colorful plants that change with the seasons. The rooftop gardens will be fully planted and blooming this spring.

But the hospital also has been “greenminded” in other ways since the construction got under way more than three years ago. During that time, travelers driving past St. Francis on I-65 have seen the new patient tower grow – literally – from the ground up. No doubt they have at times seen significant debris and waste that accumulates as part of the construction process.

So what happens to all those materials?

Tonn & Blank Construction coordinates the disposal of much of the debris in an environmentally friendly way. Metals, paper, cardboard boxes and packing materials are regularly recycled. In addition, asphalt that is removed is milled up, crushed and sent back to an asphalt plant to be re-used.