The UNLV Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine is approximately 135,000 sqft and it is the school’s first permanent facility on a 9-acre parcel in the Las Vegas Medical District. This project doubles the class size, which means more doctors for Southern Nevada. Ground was broken in October 2020. The facility allows for accommodating new ideas in the future, as the site and building were designed to be flexible for expansion.

This centerpiece of the Las Vegas Medical District features a green roof, a healing garden with native & medicinal plants, and a walking trail through restored native habitat. The accessible green roof presented a variety of challenges. The most significant challenge was how to get plant material to thrive and maintain an attractive appearance on a roof top in our harsh climate. We addressed these issues by working closely with the design team and outside experts in the field to develop a project-specific standard and design that created a viable growing area with appropriate depth, soils, and drainage.

Over 35,000 sqft of garden space buffers the building from the parking lot at the main entrances. There are three individual wellness gardens within Mind, Body, and Soul that showcase plant species selected with a nutritional or medicinal connection. The rolling slope with amorphous pathways feature large custom benches, waves of various decorative rock textures and colors, as well as contrasting bands of sparse desert plantings and lush shrub and perennial mass plantings. This project features our company’s most diverse planting palette ever. The walking trail winds through almost 150,000 sqft of enhanced desert landscape and restored native habitat. Looped pathways throughout the site provide much needed natural space in the medical district and also opportunities to get moving. Shady canopy trees and flowering shrubs line the path. A large open space on the east side of the site is set aside for future expansion but for now pollinating insects, birds, and other native critters have a space as well.