PROJECT REPORT: HEALTHCARE BUILDINGS 31


aim, but timber in healthcare is difficult, particularly with new post-Grenfell fire legislation and Part B in general.” However, he asserts the benefits: “There is a lot of evidence that the traditional white walls and vinyl floors are actually not great for people’s health and wellbeing, so we did a lot of work internally on using natural materials such as lino, and daylight.” The architects even looked at cleaning regimes and the wellness impacts of typical hospital cleaning products: “We went really deep into it, to try and look at the whole spectrum of people’s health,” says Woodford.


He says there is a lack of updated technical evidence for why wood should not be used in healthcare interiors on grounds of harbouring bacteria. There are contrasting arguments that such natural materials can offer benefits for cancer patients in particular, who can for example suffer from ‘neuropathy’ i.e. nerve damage during chemo and radiotherapy treatment, which makes


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touching colder materials very unpleasant. He says that the practice’s argument was “there are some rooms where infection control is very important, such as an operating theatre, but there are a hell of a lot of rooms where it’s not.” He adds: “If you go to an outpatient clinic, why do you have to sit on a plastic chair, and why can’t you have a timber window?” Woodford also believes that the benefits for staff of natural materials cannot be underestimated, given that these are not only places for users and equipment, but are equally workspaces. In terms of daylighting, the architects did modelling to ensure the clerestory glazing that runs around the top of the facades was correctly sized for the benefit of all. The client in this case was keen for this building to have some of the feel of a Maggie’s Centre (there is already one on the Velindre Cancer Centre site, designed with a timber interior by Dow Jones Architects). This was a component of the client’s drive for using timber as a fundamental part of this new building, but


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