UT Southwestern Medical Center at RedBird

UT Southwestern Medical Center at RedBird transforms the skeleton of a vacant Sears department store into a large community clinic. The facility provides family medicine, women’s health, dialysis, and other services, bringing much-needed preventative medicine to South Dallas. Ample parking, proximity to the freeway, and access to public transportation made the site desirable, and the architects sought to keep the existing shopping mall structure as intact as possible. To address the floor plate’s limited access to natural light, they introduced a slot at the center of the building to increase daylighting. This intervention allowed for the creation of a garden for the waiting areas that anchors the corridors, supporting intuitive wayfinding. The adaptive reuse project preserves an important piece of the community’s collective memory while transforming the building into a place of care and healing.

“The ‘big box’ idiom is completely gone because of this strategic carving of the spaces. It’s a tremendous transformation with the amount of transparency and the way it turns what was a lifeless box into something that’s really serving the community. It’s a key prototype for us to look at for what American malls could become to stay alive and serve a new use.” —Chris Baribeau, FAIA

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