Multi-Symptom Structural Solutions for The Ohio State University Inpatient Tower

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At 1.9 million square feet, The Ohio State University’s (OSU’s) new University Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, is the largest single project in the University’s 155-year history. Its 19-level seamless connection to the adjacent James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute is among the most intricate in the nation.

The project targeted several structural goals: control wind-related movement for occupant comfort, keep below-grade areas dry, meet strict vibration limits for imaging and operating rooms, and connect to existing hospital buildings without interrupting operations. Instead of concentrating on each challenge separately, the team developed integrated structural solutions that addressed multiple needs at once to achieve these goals. In practice, this meant using a coordinated structural strategy to manage wind and flood risks, support vertical circulation, allow for future flexibility, and reduce cost and schedule impacts.

Rising 410 feet above the banks of the Olentangy River, the OSU Wexner Medical Center’s new University Hospital ranks among the 10 tallest buildings in Columbus.

From the start, the design team favored an integrated approach to achieve a “stacked benefit” result for decisions, coordinating the foundations, the structural lateral system, and the building’s main vertical elements (such as elevators and stairs) to solve several challenges at once.

Taken together, these constraints showed that the project needed coordinated solutions that would solve multiple issues simultaneously to avoid significant cost increases, schedule delays, and inefficient layouts.

Like many major hospitals, OSU needed substantial parking on a constrained site. An additional basement parking level was omitted following groundwater and flood-risk analysis, considering the nearby Olentangy River. To keep the campus functioning, the project phased the work by relocating Cannon Drive, allowing a new stand-alone 1,877-stall parking garage to open first and maintain capacity during early demolition activities. The construction of the centralized inpatient tower followed. The remaining below-grade level became a sealed, flood-resistant “bathtub” serving as a water barrier while resisting hydrostatic uplift. The result is a foundation system that serves dual purposes, providing both structural support and clinical functionality, housed in the lowest level of the building.

The first step to achieve this was to redesign an originally proposed forest of small-diameter augercast deep foundation elements with fewer, high-capacity deep foundations. Instead of more than 1,000 piles with caps, the team took one straight shot to rock with 237 rock-bearing drilled shafts, sized to diameters of up to 9 feet. The approach simplified the work, reduced concrete material and embodied carbon, and better addressed the site’s natural geology by utilizing the bedrock layer 50 feet below. Geotechnical testing was conducted to eliminate conservative factors and confirm the 200 ksf bearing capacity—unusually high for Ohio area bedrock—used in the design. With the right specialty subcontractor and rigs, production averaged roughly three shafts per day. The change delivered approximately $8 million in foundation savings and meaningful schedule compression.

Below grade, the “bathtub” acts like a boat hull, with variable concrete thickness tuned to also carry building loads to the drilled shaft foundations. The 30-inch continuous portion of the mat slab is designed to keep water out and resist hydrostatic uplift pressures resulting from more than 34 feet of embedment below the design flood water level. The buoyancy was significant enough to require active dewatering during construction until the hold-down weight of multiple floors was constructed.

Because basements do not just flood from the outside, the team coordinated internal water management with the plumbing engineer, BR+A. Trenches were formed within the top surface of the mat and directed to dual sump pumps so that if a leak forms or a system floods inside the building, water has a reliable path out. The sealed-basement concept, paired with integrated drains, provided a resilient system necessary for continuous hospital operations. The combined foundation strategy—drilled shafts to bedrock, plus a sealed bathtub—reduced elements, simplified construction, and supported the programmatic need for below-grade space, doing more than just making the structural math work.

Early wind-tunnel testing during the schematic design phase provided a surprise. North–south wind actions exceeded prescriptive code forces by a significant margin, resulting in a 63% increase in wind-driven base shear. In round numbers, that meant stepping up from roughly 4,600 to 7,500 kips, while east–west behavior tracked more closely with the prescriptive code values.

The building’s long, wing-shaped floor plates resulted in a torsional response under wind that required mitigation. A multi-core scheme focused on locating concrete walls around groupings of the 51 total elevators within the building, avoiding shear walls in high-value clinical program space. The combined staff and patient elevator banks provided the central anchor, with north and south stair and elevator cores complemented by a braced frame on the east side, providing torsional restraint where needed.

The team added strength and targeted stiffness where wind demanded it. Outrigger bracing introduced during schematic design tied the cores to perimeter columns through steel truss elements at double-height mechanical spaces between Levels 7 and 10 (about 33 feet clear). The inclusion of the outriggers trimmed concrete core sizes by roughly 20% while keeping the clinical planning modules intact and service zones uncluttered.

Comfort ran parallel to strength. Floor lateral accelerations were evaluated against inpatient criteria at service-level winds across all occupied floors, validating that the propeller effect was tamed without over-stiffening the entire frame.

For time-critical care, the team first established the vertical route that incoming patients would use, then designed the structural framing around that path. A dedicated pair of trauma elevators provides a direct connection from the roof helipad to the operating rooms on Levels 4 and 5, eliminating the need for ambulance transfers in between. Compared with layouts where helipads sit on remote garages and patients are then moved by ambulance to the Emergency Department or operating rooms, this roof-to-operating-room route reduces handoffs and delays when seconds matter.

Placing the helipad on the roof aligned with state-of-the-art hospital practice and the project’s regional Level 1 Trauma Center role, but it demanded structural follow-through. At the top of the building, that meant supporting the raised helipad platform and its 30,000-pound load allowance. Oversized elevators required catwalk access, and overhead machine room framing extended an additional 48 feet above the main roof level.

Below the OR, ground-level Emergency Department parking and loading dock access had to be thoughtfully addressed. The challenges were resolved by clear-spanning the northeast portion of the podium over the traffic below with a series of story-deep steel trusses up to 102 feet long. Performance-based vibration analysis confirmed a stringent criterion of 4,000 MIPS was satisfied.

By treating the helipad, trauma elevators, operating floors, and supporting framing as one coordinated system, the team created the fastest path to care without adding structural complexity. The same integrated approach that aligned vertical logistics with clinical needs also drove steel framing efficiencies across the project, contributing to nearly $24 million in savings.

The tower does not just sit beside the existing James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute; it links to it across 19 levels, requiring extraordinary expansion joints. The separation allows each building to move independently to meet thermal and wind demands, while maintaining continuous daily operations between facilities. This meant designing for up to 16 inches of relative movement in systems addressing fire and smoke, mechanical and plumbing services, access control, doors, services, and finishes.

The connection strategy flowed as an extension of how the hospital program was arranged. A cost-effective vertical layout placed the patient tower above clinical floors, with mid-level mechanical and podium diagnostics aligned to maintain contiguous primary services. Bigger rooms and column-free zones in critical areas reduced obstacles at the pass-throughs, allowing people, equipment, and supplies to move as if within a single building, even though the structures are deliberately separated.

Executing a 19-floor connection required repeatable details that could be built, inspected, and maintained. Expansion-joint covers, rated separations, and movement-capable utilities were integrated so that what worked on Level 5 would also work on Level 15. The structural detailing utilized a held-back column line and variable-length cantilever framing to accommodate custom joints tailored to the needs of each floor. The structural separation does the quiet work of absorbing movement; the architectural and life-safety detailing does the visible work of making the hospitals feel continuous.

OSU’s new University Hospital demonstrates the value of making structural choices that address more than one challenge at a time. Rock-bearing shafts and a sealed “bathtub” address groundwater and uplift while simplifying foundation construction. A wind-tuned, multi-core lateral bracing system with targeted outriggers meets drift and comfort criteria driven by efficiency. Critical care pathways are provided through vertical planning and long-span framing, without sacrificing vibration performance. A 19-level expansion joint allows facilities to operate as one for patients while maintaining independent structures for engineering purposes.

With a project cost of $1.9 billion, the building is the capstone of a multi-year upgrade that began with The James and extends a higher standard of adult inpatient care across the campus. Taken together, the tower, its connections, and the modernization of clinical settings enable OSU to transition from aging inpatient facilities to a durable platform for the future of growing regional demand and evolving clinical practice. ■

About the Author

James P. Mahoney, P.E., S.E., is a Principal at Magnusson Klemencic Associates (MKA)
Mike C. Jewsbury, P.E., S.E., is a Senior Principal at MKA