Architecture,
Planning and Design
The £30m extension to the
Northern General Hospital in Sheffield, the Hadfield
Building, has opened. Designed by Sheppard Robson as
part of the Kajima PFI Consortium, the extension is
one of the most significant buildings that the
hospital has commissioned since the 1980s and is set
to influence future refurbishment and new build
projects for the Trust.
Occupying a former car park, on a steeply sloping
site, the 10,930m2 new building provides six medical
wards holding 168 beds with associated support
facilities and administration areas. The wards are
arranged on three floors in two L-shaped buildings
accessed by a triple height central atrium forming a
secure entrance for visitors. The L-shaped
configuration creates two landscaped courtyards
accessed from emergency link bridges and overlooked
by the wards.
The building is designed to generate a non-clinical
environment which aids recovery and improves patient
experience. Each ward – a combination of single
rooms and three- and four-bed rooms – has generous
bed spacing and access to a window with a low sill
to allow patients external view from their beds, an
‘arts for health’ initiative has been adopted with
the installation of original mosaics and artwork and
a way-finding system has been designed in the theme
of the four seasons, using colour and motif.
The way-finding system is a series of signs,
designed by ID:SR, the interior design group of
Sheppard Robson. Each floor and the wards are
indicated by seasonal motif, the design of which is
influenced by the textile artist Lucien Day, and
repeated on the glazed link bridge to the main
hospital. Specific arts installations include a
mosaic at ground floor by local artist Joanna Kessel,
canvases, again of a seasonal theme, for the wards,
and staff areas and textile work by Janet Bolton.
Funding for the art was generated by the hospital,
including a contribution from Kajima and the design
team worked closely with the Trust to incorporate
art which related to the local community, fulfilled
the objectives detailed in the NHS document: The art
of good health: using visual arts in healthcare’ and
was affordable.
Externally warm timber cladding, and the
transparency of the glazing further contributes to
the overall physical environment of comfort and
familiarity endowing the otherwise clinical nature
of hospital design with implications of recovery and
good health.
Email:
liz.earwaker@sheppardrobson.com
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Editor's Note: Sheppard Robson provide:-
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Sheppard Robson - Sheffield’s hospital extension opens
Arundel Jones Associates Ltd News Categories : Architecture, Planning and Design |