Danielle Bowling reports on two of Australia's most impressive - and multiple award-winning - recently completed hospital projects.
Innovations and developments in healthcare design are increasingly influenced by evidence-based design. The theory that the road to recovery is actually a quicker, smoother process when patients are in a pleasant, positive environment is having a significant influence on how our hospitals, both now and in the future, look and feel.
Two noteworthy healthcare fitout projects in Australia are examples of this:
The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne
Bates Smart Architects, Mark Healey, lead interior designer
"It's proven that people get better when they have a view of nature, so the most critical parts of the hospital were located away from the street, and given the best views of the parkland. That was one of the starting principles of the overall hospital," Healey says.
The $1b project, designed by joint venture between Billard Leece Partnership and Bates Smart Architects, with US based HKS as international advisers, is located in Parkville Victoria and was recently presented with the Premier Award for Interior Design Excellence and Innovation at this year's Australian Interior Design Awards. As a children's hospital, a key element of the brief was to avoid the typical institutional, clinical feel that many hospitals have.
To achieve this, and to also help with wayfinding, the designers chose to introduce various themes throughout the building.
"We decided that the wayfinding system needed to have a child friendly aspect to it, so we applied a theme to the whole hospital, inspired by the state of Victoria. We highlighted important or unique environments from around Victoria and associated one to each level of the building; so for example, the lower ground area is Port Phillip Bay; named 'Underwater'. The next layer of detail features animals from that environment to define the different departments. Emergency Short Stay is referred to as the Dolphin Ward," he says.
The hospital also has a two storey high aquarium visible from the lower ground emergency department up to the main street on ground level, defining the entry point and creating a very memorable wayfinding marker.
Colour also played an important role in creating a child friendly environment, especially in areas typically seen as being stressful or tense.
Sheree Proposch, health director, says the Emergency Department waiting areas are an example of evidence-based design in action. "A typical waiting area has rows of hard, uncomfortable plastic seating. When families arrive at ED it's normally a high stress situation. In addition to the patient, you might have accompanying siblings and everyone is anxious. We designed a suite of huge colourful, sculptural seats with lots of alcoves where families can feel close and contained. Just by changing the furniture you can make a huge difference," she says.
Healey says colours are clustered around waiting areas and staffing stations, used in the furniture and the laminate of all 120 reception desks, and linked to the overarching theme of the department or level.
"We made sure that everything worked with the whole colour scheme of the particular level, and was related to the graphic overlay of that theme. All the colouration was derived from the particular theme of the level, making the range of colours enormous. It was quite a major feat".
A feat which saw the project claim the Grand Prix at the 2012 Dulux Colour Awards, where it also claimed the Commercial Interior category, for a project that cleverly integrated colour throughout the building's design.
The street concept and north orientation of the hospital allowed daylight-filled landscaped gardens around the full perimeter of the building, avoiding a 'front and back' portrayal. The natural slope of the site meant that the new facilities could link to the park at three different levels intertwining the hospital with its park setting.
"Pathways were also carried through from the parkland surrounds. The external concrete cut pavers colour matched typical parkland paths in Melbourne and were carried through to the interior of the street, then acted as a departure point for the vinyl designs," says Healey.
Coloured vinyl flooring was also used under reception desks and staffing stations. The choice of flooring materials assisted in linking the outside, natural environment with the hospital's interior, once again diminishing the clinical atmosphere usually associated with healthcare facilities. "It was an important design decision made early on in the process that the flooring throughout utilised different and appropriate materials, whilst remaining true to the overall design concept".
Robina Hospital, Gold Coast
BVN principal, Mark Grimmer
The World Architecture News jury named this project the winner of the 'Healthcare Project of the Year Interiors and Design Awards 2011', congratulating it for creating "a healthcare environment which challenges preconceptions of how a hospital should look and feel and what the hospital experience should be like."
Like the Royal Children's Hospital, Robina Hospital placed significant focus on blurring the distinction between the outside world and the hospital's confines.
Views out to gardens were captured as often as possible, but when this wasn't possible, colourful courtyards were used as a visual escape for patients.
"Some of the views are more inward looking, and they're out to courtyards, so we used colour and that was in the form of alpolic. It's made by Mitsubishi Industries and it's a pre-finished, pre-painted aluminium panel and they were used to provide the colour accents in the courtyards, and they're very bright," says Grimmer.
Used in bright orange, yellow and green, the alpolic was a cost-effective, long-term choice.
"It [Robina] is a managing contractor project so a lot of those selections had to go through the managing contractor process, and there's obviously cost reviews that go along with that, so under those conditions it still came out as a very cost-effective material.
"The benefit of alpolic is that it has a very long life and it's very durable."
And in situations where views outside just aren't appropriate or possible, Robina Hospital granted patients escapism in the form of supergraphics.
"Even the operating theatres have large high resolution photographs on the wall of scenes of nature," Grimmer said. "So if you walk into one of the operating theatres there's a huge picture on the wall of a beach at Fraser Island or the rainforest at Lamington [National Park]. We tried to pick pictures from the local area and it's amazing the impact that having a photograph on the wall of a theatre or an x-ray room has on people. They find that uplifting".
Glass played a key role in the hospital's upgrade, the bulk of which was completed about 12 months ago, and in holding onto the "vibrancy and appeal" that the building already enjoyed, says Grimmer.
"Recruiting staff in the health industry is a big issue, and we wanted to continue with the popularity amongst the [Robina] staff, which we were convinced was associated with the nice, friendly feel of the place, so we did that through natural light. So lots of glass, and taking all the opportunities we could to introduce natural light into the floor plates so it wasn't dark inside and there was views out."
All of the bedrooms have large windows, the ends of the corridors were kept open and windows were placed in the best places to capture the maximum amount of natural light possible.
"It's just flooded with natural light and I think it's just so rare to find that in a hospital - having such nice views, nice outlooks into courtyards, nice bright colours - you just feel uplifted being there, and all those things contribute to what people would call a non-institutional feel."
Grimmer doesn't credit the hospital's impressive design and "pleasant" feel to innovative building products or world-first design techniques, but rather a clever combination of appropriate materials.
"We used a variety of fairly common building products. We have Terrazzo tiles on the main floors in the lobbies and corridors. We used a lot of timber where we could and obviously there's the usual plasterboard, vinyls and those sorts of materials you'd expect to see in a hospital.
"They all worked together. So it's a combination of the colour, the lighting, the natural light and the natural materials as well. They all go together to give you that overall feel."
Image: The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, Bates Smart Architects, Mark Healey, lead interior designer
