Stephanie McDonald reports on the new O’Brien Building on the St Vincent’s Hospital campus in Darlinghurst, Sydney, which has been designed by BVN Architecture.
What kind of face to the public do you create for a building next to a heritage building in one of Sydney’s former red light districts?
The architectural strategy by BVN Architecture was to rejuvenate the corner of Victoria and Burton Streets in Darlinghurst, Sydney. The building was also required to create a new urban square in the area and to liberate the heritage façade of the existing deLacy building, which was hidden for several years beneath layers of unsympathetic additions.
BVN demolished those additions and “were able to pull the O’Brien building back from the deLacy, thereby creating a human-scaled courtyard that reveals the fine detailing and corbelling of the 1890s building with its 1930 colonnade,” says James Grose, national director at BVN.
Placing the O’Brien building to the rear of the existing deLacy building created a tight site. A brick façade helps to manage that tight site through its scale and colour, reflecting the streetscape in Paddington, which is now known for its expensive terrace houses and high-end designer retail stores.
“[The bricks] are also functional and ensure the building had expression and modulation, bringing in a smaller scale, making it more approachable for those visiting drug and alcohol and community health and giving it a scale for compassionately focused care,” Grose says.
“It has little surface articulation. Therefore it liberates the tactile northern façade of the heritage deLacy building that has been hidden behind ad hoc and ill conceived structures for years.”
The exterior screen folds open at a large urban scale to do two things. One is to create a clear entrance to the building and to magnify the idea of the visual regression of the façade. This heightens the drama of the deLacy building at the corner where the two buildings now appear to merge.
BVN used two types of bricks on the northern façade — Bowral Blue on the top and glazed brick on the lower levels, which are tied together by a white mortar cement band.
A perforated bronze anodised screen facing west provides protection from the glaring summer sun on the western façade. The screen, which was placed on a powdercoated steel structure and top hung, was specially designed for the western façade and customised and assembled by a contractor.
A total of 410 sqm of perforated bronzed anodised aluminum panels were used, with the entire screen consisting of 182 prefabricated panels. The panels were fabricated in an off-site factory and transported to the site ready to be attached to the frame.
The frame consists of a number of pre-cut hot dipped galvanised steel elements. The first step in the installation process included fixing the first steel structures to the concrete edge at the top of the building and adding modules until the framing reached the ground.
Once the frame was hung and complete, the pre-cut panels were attached to the frame to complete the final stage of the screen assembly.
By orienting the O’Brien building back on the site of the deLacy building, BVN gave the heritage building prominence on the site, instead of overpowering the urban space.
Internally, an open atrium creates a stairwell from level three up to level seven to bring daylight down from the upper level clerestory.
The first two floors are below ground and have a high level of security. The O’Brien management team took a strategic decision to locate the main boardroom and meeting rooms in the middle of the facility, which is visible to staff through glass walls overlooking the stair void. Kitchens and lounges are also located around the atrium on higher levels.
Patient facilities include a sunny common room with a large café/kitchen opening onto a court yard. Patients and staff access harbour views in a two-storey glazed box on the Burton Street side of the building, which also includes meeting rooms and offices.
BVN planned the patient wards and consulting rooms around parallel corridors which are easily accessible from the central stair, and lift lobbies are finished with warm colours and materials to create an inviting environment.
The building is part of the urban consolidation of St Vincent’s services into the hospital campus from three different sites for drug and alcohol, community health and mental health services.
The O’Brien building façade is part of BVN’s ongoing exploration of façade designs which began with Nokia in Pyrmont, which also used a metal screen alongside a brick façade.
The architecture firm also used screens in NAB at Docklands and Nortel at Macquarie University. The new Kinghorn Cancer Centre is also undergoing construction across the road from the O’Brien building and will include an urban screen.
