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PROJECT REPORT: HEALTHCARE BUILDINGS
PORTLAND PRESENCE
The east elevations as well as the podium are clad in a Portland stone-like grey tile at lower levels, in a varied pattert to give a sense of stone cladding
ophthalmology, renal and breast units, but also spiritual care facilities and two landscaped courtyards.
As well as the Emergency department, the first floor has the facilities management distribution entrance, where all of the crucial hospital supplies arrive, located within the clinical sciences building at the north-east flank. The architects worked hard to separate the circulation flows of patients, staff and supplies into distinct pathways on this relatively tight, relatively deep-planned site. The general strategy is that patients, visitors and staff come up in lifts through the centre of the building, and there are separate pairs of lifts for facilities management at the extremities, fed from the Level 3 (non-public) floor, which bring supplies in and take waste out. Creating external as well as internal circulation connections is critical to ensuring that healthcare planning serves patients’ as well as clinicians’ interests, and gives them the most efficient routes around what can be complex sites to navigate. There’s a double link bridge at level three, connecting the tower with the clinical sciences building to the north end of the site. This allows the FM distribution
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to ‘come in at the back’ of the tower, and not impede patient circulation. This is one example of how the architects have successfully managed to separate the flow of patients and the efficient distribution of supplies. The central street is enhanced by trees, and it functions somewhat as a new public space.
As Jess Karsten, of co-architect HKS,
tells ADF, “direct links” have also been created to the new Clatterbridge Cancer Centre to the west of the site. “We have bridges at multiple levels connecting to the centre, making it very efficient for staff and patients to move between.” This was also a part of the overall focus on ensuring that ‘patient pathways’ were made as helpful and effective as possible for patients, she says: “They were key to the overall design organisation in terms of circulation, space and ease of wayfinding, for example we located departments like ophthalmology and outpatients on the lower ground floor, to make it very easy for ambulatory patients to get in and out.” The organisation and location of theatres was also carefully considered in terms of the different “patient streams” that would be using them, for example
ADF JULY/AUGUST 2023
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