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About 120 community leaders were given their first glimpse of architectural designs for the massive rebuilding and expansion of Stanford University's hospitals and medical center Monday.

"I'm a real believer in treating the whole person," Martha Marsh, president and CEO of Stanford Hospital and Clinics, said of the underlying design concepts, which architects called "soothing." She hosted the reception along with Christopher Dawes, president and CEO of the Children's Hospital.

Architects for both the main hospital and a new Children's Hospital showed off their concepts at a meeting at the Garden Court Hotel in downtown Palo Alto.

The new plans for the main hospital feature three lower levels surrounding a dramatic fan-shaped cascading waterfall, the core of the "soothing" feeling the architects say they have been striving to create throughout the building.

Atop the lower levels are four cube-shaped structures rising six and seven floors to an ultimate height of 130 feet, with an additional pavilion off one corner connected by walkways.

There would be room for additional pavilions that could be added later, based on the same design, officials said.

Models of the hospitals at the unveiling showed dramatically different concepts for the main complex and the separate Children's Hospital, which featured sweeping curves and rounded ends, with "tree house" areas looking over gardens where families could gather.

Stanford faces a mandate to replace by 2014 the existing hospital buildings, part of which date back to the late 1950s when earthquake standards were less sophisticated.