New "Commonground" For Eskenazi Health Campus

Eskenazi Health dedicated the newest addition to its campus Tuesday: an outdoor commons.  Eskenazi earned praise for the people-centered design of its new hospital campus, which opened in December. The Commonground extends those principles into an outdoor space.

"I think we are getting what our patients have known all along –that our job in health care is not just to take care of people when they’re sick," said Eskenazi Health CEO Dr. Lisa Harris. "Our more important job is to keep people well in the first place. We created this with everything we know about promoting health. We brought all that to bear in the design."

Design firms LAND COLLECTIVE, The Olin Studio and Diller Scofidio + Renfro collaborated to created The Commonground.

It's a compact, inviting place with a babbling fountain called “Healing Waters” – perfect for wading … a limestone waterfall sculpture that hosts native aquatic plants …  and soaring steel trellises for grapes and other edible crops to climb.

Designer David Rubin got involved in the Eskenazi project about five years ago, after a call from Matthew Gutwein, the president and CEO of the Marion County Health and Hospital Corporation.

"He (Gutwein) started to talk with me about his attitude toward health … his attitudes toward health industry mirrored my approach to landscape architecture. In both cases, we embrace the full spectrum of society and providing service for everyone," Rubin said.

The Commonground was built using private donations, including a total of $2.9 million for an outdoor pavilion and trellis gardens.