building - designing the space

A building sensitive to the direction of light and the seasons

The design brief for GHH posed various challenges and opportunities, including prescriptive space standards, derived from NHS guidelines for all accommodation elements. It asked for:

A building form and layout that would facilitate extension yet retain visual excellence, extended or not.

Stringent cost limits, set within normal yardstick costs for accommodation of its type.

Macmon’s architects therefore set out to respond in a ‘holistic’ way to both the hospitals operating requirements and the significant environmental issues, posed by the shape of the site, and its proximity to a busy rail route. Their solution was to create a L-shaped building with defensible courtyard. In their design, the interior and exterior of the building would provide an integrated care and healing environment, where all patient rooms would have access to and could be accessed from the landscaped garden. The chosen layout also meant that the entrance could be located in the North East corner of the building so that it would be protected from prevailing south-westerly winds and driving rain.

Principle building elements have also been carefully planned within the structures efficient and affordable geometry. Reception and Dispensary elements are centrally located to optimize access and use, while accommodation elements that are of lesser significance in constructional terms are intended to reflect more directly natural forms and layout. Existing pedestrian routes have been respected and a new in/out vehicle ‘drop off/park’ arrangement has been created.

The general arrangement and juxtaposition of departments within GHH, creates provide a passive, low energy hospital environment that it highly functional and beautiful to behold.

“Thank you so much for everything you have created at the hospital. I wonder if you realise how important it is for those of us who depend upon it's environment to calm us, strengthen us, and then send us out into the world to cope for another while.”

Patient.