ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN
an online questionnaire, is used to explore building users’ preferences for the qualities of the built environment – both in terms of the way that they want to use space effectively, and the qualities that the built environment should have in order to best support their activities. This survey explores psychological and physiological needs, and generates a brief for the building that supports people’s health and wellbeing – enabling them to be more productive.
Stable temperatures and good ventilation
The results of our surveys show that researchers who spend long periods of time on focused tasks particularly value a workplace that offers stable temperatures and good ventilation. Unsurprisingly, they do not want to be distracted by the need to break away from focused tasks and adjust these for themselves. They just expect uniformity of temperature and fresh air. This is an interesting conundrum for designers, who generally seek to maximise natural ventilation wherever possible, so as to reduce carbon emissions. Similarly, researchers also value high-quality task lighting. Less obviously, we found that researchers also highly value having a view to the outdoors, as this helps with concentration and feeling connected with the world. It should be noted that studies have shown that a view to the outside can reduce heartrates by 1.2 times, reducing blood pressure, and feelings of stress. Furthermore, researchers expressed a desire to be in proximity to nature and natural materials. These, they feel, help them remain calm and maintain a connection with the outside world – particularly if they are spending long periods of time indoors. Finally, researchers acknowledged that chance
How the entrance to the new research facility will look. HLM says that ‘the bold, contemporary architecture complements the surrounding buildings in form and materiality, without resorting to pastiche’.
encounters and conversations with colleagues outside their immediate team often led to innovative ideas. Encouraging movement around the building thus became a key driver of the design. The added benefit to health and wellbeing of stimulating movement away from desk sitting came into play here too.
Engagement with the building’s users
In tandem with these data-supported insights reflecting the requirements of the brief to support effective working, we engaged with building users to understand the process of their work in order to better understand how the building might support their needs.
LIHE will provide the meeting point of healthcare and education to generate research innovation. It’s a facility that promotes and supports new ways of working. Through engagement with building user stakeholders, we have developed an understanding of the new ways of working that are demanded by the lifecycle of a research project. With proximity to the hospital and testing facilities, LIHE will become a ‘research eco-system’. This ecosystem requires an environment that enables academics, clinicians, engineers, entrepreneurs, and industry specialists, to develop and explore ideas, expanding them into project teams of varying sizes – with confidentiality if required – and to test these ideas in nearby labs and real-world hospital settings with prototypes, and for the whole cycle of research and development to be capable of looping back on itself as ideas evolve or die.
A CGI of the courtyard, with the ‘collaboration staircase’ clearly in view. 40 Health Estate Journal October 2021
Flexibility and adaptability This gestation of projects was really at the heart of the new facility’s design, and the focus we gave to the flexibility and adaptability of the building. The needs of the building users are complex and varied, while the building layout is capable of delivering spaces that support and nurture collaboration. We imagined the building’s floorplates as a stage where new settings can be created quickly to support different sizes of teams, and to provide separation from ‘competing’ teams wherever necessary. The design therefore enables spaces to be reconfigured in a matter of days, or even hours, with demountable partitions stored locally that fix to a grid of bulkheads,
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