Photo by Eckert & Eckert Multicare’s 20,000-square-foot Central Utility Plant provides Tacoma General and Mary Bridge Children’s hospitals with sterilization, heat, energy and oxygen-supply needs, and furnishes backup power during emergencies.

The MultiCare Medical Center Central Utility Plant packages steam, emergency power, electrical distribution and medical gas systems into a building designed to be respectful of its surroundings and true to its purpose.

The masonry exterior keys off nearby vintage structures while street-level windows offer tableaus of the inner workings of the plant.

Brick patterning and steel canopies modulate the facades and reduce their scale. Relief portraiture, inscriptions and brickwork murals reveal the history of the plant’s technology.