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BUILDING PROJECTS
After a decade in the planning stage, Taunton finally sees the £34 million first phase of a major new development come to their World War II hospital. Steve Menary goes to Musgrove Park Hospital to discover more
design and construction. Musgrove Park Hospital’s history dates back to World
M
War II. The United States’ 67th General Hospital unit occu- pied the site on December 5, 1942, as US forces arrived in Europe to prepare for the D-Day landings. Memories of those days are still evident. Not just from the swathes of old black and white photographs of days gone by but also from the actual construction. The original design specified that the corridors should be
wide enough to take a military jeep with stretchers either side. An extension that opened in 1987, the Queen’s Building, had different specifications and a design that was more redolent of those times. Another extension, the Duchess Building, opened in 1995 but a third of the hospital’s accommodation is in buildings that are more than 65 years old. Taunton & Somerset NHS Foundation Trust had been
developing plans for another major extension for around a decade. A £75 million project was first proposed in 2004 and an outline business case was approved in 2006, only for the project to be split to avoid going down the Private Finance Initiative route. The first phase comprises the Jubilee Building and Central
Concourse, while the second tranche of the scheme will see work carried out to five operating theatres and the critical care unit. The trust drew up a design vision and this has led to more adventurous architecture on the first phase, including a dis- tinctive floating style roof, which has been designed by archi- tects Building Design Partnership (BDP). The £34 million first phase comprises 5,600 sq m of new
healthcare facilities spread across two and three storeys and pro- viding bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms and toilets. The floating roof is the design centrepiece of the main part, the Jubilee Building, which is being linked to the Queen’s Building. This link between the two buildings comprises the second
© Steve Menary
part of the new scheme: a major two-storey concourse build- ing that will allow patients to move between the Queen’s and Jubilee buildings in greater privacy than at present.
ost of the UK’s hospitals have evolved over time, with facilities added on an often ad hoc basis, which can produce problems both in terms of
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