Anyone who’s been in the hospital knows that privacy is hard to come by. The new Eric and Sheila Samson Pavilion on the Health Education Campus (HEC) in Cleveland, Ohio, won’t have that problem, thanks to custom film and glasswork by Suntrol.

“The Health Education Campus is part of the transformation of medicine and the renaissance of Cleveland, and we are honored to contribute custom window film to a visionary project of this scope,” said Suntrol’s founder John Hansen.

Size Doesn’t Matter

Suntrol has been in Cleveland for 40 years and, according to Hansen, has been working with a joint owner of the HEC, the Cleveland Clinic, for decades. Though the company has been involved with projects of this scale before, Hansen said this one was unique. It required 15,000 square feet of interior glass custom fitted with LLumar White Frost film for privacy and safety. And all the film had to align with interior elements, such as paneling, table tops and skirt lines. Everything had to match visually, including the extension of internal design elements down hallways and up toward ceilings.

And while Suntrol has installed plenty of film on various Cleveland Clinic campuses over the years, Hansen notes that there has been a growing demand for those applications to consider aesthetics and graphics as well as providing privacy, security and solar control. This is especially true for projects in children’s areas. Yet, this particular project wasn’t for a working hospital or health service center.

“The Health Education Campus represents the future of medicine and the future of medical education and community collaboration,” Hansen said. The $515 million facility is a jointly owned project of Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University, and was designed by Britain’s most eminent architect, Lord Norman Foster of Foster + Partners. “This project showcased an incredible level of cooperation and collaboration by everyone involved.”

Relying on Teamwork

Cooperation and collaboration were the only ways the project was going to be successful.

“Working and pausing as needed based upon real-time construction schedules was part of this process. There were so many contractors on site at all times, it sometimes felt like a giant beehive. Suntrol deftly worked around contractors on different floors, glaziers, and numerous project teams,” Hansen explained. “Many times it was necessary for our team to work late in the evening in order to stay on schedule. Parking was a big challenge, too, because the parking area kept changing based upon completion of various sections of the campus.”

Not only did parking keep changing, but so did the weather—and yet, the Suntrol team, usually in two- or three-person crews at a time, soldiered on, completing the project in unbelievable time. It was backed by the support of the internal staff and a production manager.

Photo Finish

The first conversation the Cleveland Clinic had with Hansen and his staff took place in October 2018. Suntrol delivered its first quote in November, and work began a month later.

“It was actually a pretty short lead-time,” Hansen said of the project that was completed in late May and the facility opened to students on July 8.

“This building is going to lend itself to a complete revolution in medical school education,” said Ronn Richard, president and CEO of The Cleveland Foundation and Cleveland Clinic Visionary Society member during the Samson Pavilion dedication ceremony.

And Suntrol was there to help make it happen.

Brigid O’Leary is a contributing writer for WINDOW FILM magazine.

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