HMFH was hired for a feasibility study to determine the best option for accommodating the university's burgeoning health service. Following a campus health task force report in 2005 that identified major objectives and barriers, and faced with a planned 12% increase in undergraduate enrollment by 2009, no one questions the need to update and expand the 30,000 sf McCosh Infirmiry. The eighty-year-old Gothic building, once isolated on the east edge of the historic campus, now sits at the heart of an expanding campus and adjacent to the new Frist Campus Center that houses food services and activities for students, faculty and staff. Also serving the entire campus community, the University Health Service provides in-patient, counseling and psych, urgent care and general medical service. The new health service center will offer an up-to-date and welcoming medical service in an environment that promotes wellness and respects individual privacy.

Following a thorough evaluation of the existing building and site conditions, an intensive programming effort and a planning charrette involving both health service and university planning staff, the design team has developed a series of building expansion options. In addition to expanding the health service program in a classic collegiate Gothic building, the new facility must respond to its campus context: existing and emerging pedestrian patterns, service and emergency vehicle access, and redefinition of adjacent courtyard spaces. The design team includes Hawley Peterson Snyder Architects of Mountain View, CA, with whom HMFH collaborates on health care projects.