The Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health was designed by world-renowned architect, Frank Gehry, to provide space for medical research for disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s and ALS. The 60,000 SF facility includes a medical office building, the Wolfgang Puck Kitchen, Museum of the Mind and an event center. The medical office building is a four-story structure that includes exam rooms, Keep Memory Alive offices, and MRI and CT rooms. The Wolfgang Puck Kitchen serves food for the event center, which is a banquet hall that seats 500 people to host events, such as fundraisers for medical research.

The intricate, metal-clad exterior of the building features unique steel curvatures made up of approximately 18,000 stainless steel shingles. The curvatures include nearly 200 window openings, and each piece of steel has 60 to 100 bolts to lock together its smaller components. With only two internal columns, the impressive structure is largely self-supporting, which allows for the open, column-free atrium inside. To successfully accomplish this intricate design, almost every steel connection was individually designed and fabricated. The use of VDC was essential during design process so the team could accurately plan for construction of the facility’s complex geometry.