Architects designed the Global Center for Health Innovation to fit seamlessly with Cleveland's new convention center

It may perform brilliantly as a showplace of medical devices and technology and as a magnet for health-related conventions, or its economic impact may land somewhere south of expectations.

However things turn out for Clevelands new Global Center for Health Innovation, which will have its official ribbon-cutting Tuesday, it represents an attempt by its architects to create an easily navigable exhibit center linked seamlessly with the new underground convention center it abuts.

The architects wanted their building to fit smoothly into the urban landscape of Cleveland's historic Group Plan District, to be flooded with natural light and to be filled with subtle symbolism based on medical science.

Above all, the spatial flow between the Global Center and the convention spaces below is what mattered.

We look at it all as one thing, architect Rafael Vinoly, the lead designer of the project for LMN Architects of Seattle, Wash., said of the Global Center and the below ground convention center. Even though perceptually it may look like two, the building is functionally one unit.

In other words, the Global Center is simply the above ground portion of the new convention center, which is largely tucked beneath the northern two blocks of the citys 12.6-acre downtown Mall.

Visitors entering the four-story atrium lobby of the Global Center at St. Clair Avenue are guided by a gently sloping ramp down to escalators that lead directly to the convention centers registration area beneath the Mall.

From an overlook at the foot of the escalators, one can see directly into the vast convention exhibit areas below, and back up to the Global Centers atrium above. No one should ever need breadcrumbs to retrace their path.

The overlook is also steps away from service elevators linked to the convention centers loading docks, which also serve the Global Center.

Wall panels nearby could be knocked out to provide connections to the proposed convention hotel Cuyahoga County aims to develop on the site of its aging administration building just to the north.

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Architects designed the Global Center for Health Innovation to fit seamlessly with Cleveland's new convention center