The innovative and colourful design of the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital incorporates leading edge diagnostic and treatment facilities which provide specialist health services for children.
The project was an opportunity to contest prevailing functionalist and medico-centric models, to radically rethink the care model, to consider issues of social economic and environmental sustainability and in so doing design a building which would act as a touchstone for the local community.
The building engages with issues of sustainability in multiple ways and extends to the building's relationship and impact on the community. The community engagement process which traced through all stages of the design of LCCH provides mechanisms for ongoing community involvement with the hospital.
Over time this has the potential to renew, reinforce and otherwise benefit the local built, social, environmental and economic structures, providing a sustainable basis and a template for design for a healthy community.
KEY INITIATIVES
- Natural ventilation to public areas
- Green roofs providing amenity and reducing heat sink effects,
- Environmental, mechanical systems including the use of active chilled beam air-conditions and electrical systems including tri-generation which are attuned to energy conservation and water harvesting used for irrigation.
Photography:
Ethan Rohloff (Aerial Photograph)
Christopher Frederick Jones
