Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center Receives Excellence in Masonry Award

“Enhancing awareness of the durability, beauty and design capabilities of masonry,” is the mission statement of the Arizona Masonry Guild. We were pleased to just learn that our design for the Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center, in Gilbert AZ, received the Guild’s Excellence in Masonry award.

The Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center merged a unique partnership between one of the world’s most respected cancer centers and one of the largest nonprofit healthcare systems in the US to greatly expand metropolitan Phoenix’s oncology care services into a single comprehensive campus that facilitates a multidisciplinary approach to cancer diagnostics and treatment.

Its masonry program became a significant means to create a dialogue between the Cancer Center and the adjacent campus architecture. The tones, striations and textures of the masonry create an overall pattern of an abstracted desert landscape. As the sun activates desert geological formations, the smooth masonry takes on a reflective quality in the daylight while the dark base appears rusticated as light grazes the surface.  These planes of dark and light masonry float, rise up, and anchor the overall composition of the building skin—separated by sheets of glass and slivers of zinc panels.