To celebrate Massachusetts General Hospital’s two hundred year anniversary, the project team was commissioned to design a museum which recognized the hospital’s innovation in health care and contributions to medicine. Located on a thin triangular site in Boston’s Beacon Hill/West End neighborhood, the building was designed as an extension of the street theater and to encompass the historic Resident Physician’s House as part of the exhibit space.
With limited ground level open space, the pergola covered roof garden was designed as a contemplative greenroof for the hospital, patients, visitors and neighbors with dramatic views of the Boston skyline. A pattern of Cor-Ten steel fin walls emerge from the seams of the paving to provide various depths of soil allowing for a rich variety of plant species. The plant palette employs a variety of medicinal plants to be both instructive and aesthetically beautiful.