Evelina children's hospital, London
About the Project
- Client: Guy's and St. Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust
- Principal designer: Hopkins Architects
- Principal contractor: MJ Gleeson
- Principal engineer: Buro Happold
- Contract value: £41.8 million
Hospitals are often dark, forbidding places which serve to make already anxious patients even more so, especially children. Not so at the 140-bed Evelina Children's Hospital, where children were consulted on what they most wanted to see in the new scheme. Their answer was 'no long scary corridors', but the team went far further in designing special features to make them feel better, quicker.
Firstly, the scheme, on a difficult site hemmed in by a road on the south bank of the Thames near to St Thomas', uses a large conservatory at its heart that stretches along its entire 100m length and rises to four storeys in height, topped by a southfacing glazed roof bringing daylight in. Throughout the building, those storeys are distinguished by a different realm of the natural world, while the conservatory floor - dubbed The Beach - has a play area, a restaurant and a school for longer term patients.
Proof of success is tangible - vacancies for nursing staff have fallen from 30 percent to 20 percent and applications from consultants have doubled.
The judges said: 'Adaptability for future change is a feature of this striking new building, which has helped to lower nursing vacancy rates. A building that lifts the spirits.'
