Designed by Medical Architecture for County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, the development was recently given the green light by members of Durham’s strategic planning committee. The project is part of Cohort 2 of the Government’s New Hospital Programme, the plan by NHS England & NHS Improvement to develop 40 new healthcare facilities by 2030. Arranged around two large, landscaped courtyards, the hospital will offer a range of facilities including outpatient services and diagnostics, an urgent care centre, a medical investigations unit for cancer services alongside a chemotherapy day unit, family health services, and a 16-bed rehabilitation inpatient ward. Sited on the edge of Consett at a gateway to the County Durham countryside, it will be ideally located to deliver modern healthcare services to the growing local community. Encouraging sustainable means of transport, the site masterplan and hospital building have been designed to create a new pedestrian and cycle link which connects with the Coast-to-Coast route that runs adjacent to the site, and a new footpath leading from the town centre. A primary entrance at the front of the building provides access to the inpatient ward and outpatient departments, while a pedestrian entrance on the opposite side connects directly with the proposed new footpath.

MAKING CONNECTIONS

These are connected by a central public concourse through the building with a public café and clear wayfinding to all facilities. A simple plan, arranged around two courtyards, brings natural daylight into the heart of the building and offers almost all occupied rooms an outside view. These courtyard spaces, with landscape design delivered by ONE Environments, feature planting which is rich in texture, form, and colour, and have been designed with unique characters for different purposes. The ‘Serenity Garden’ is accessible to visitors, patients, and staff, and features a mixture of open and semi-private seating spaces so people can rest comfortably with family and friends; while the ‘Healing Garden’ has been developed in collaboration with the clinical staff as a private, therapeutic space available to patients and staff to aid and assist rehabilitation. Internally, biophilic design principles will create an uplifting and non-institutional healthcare environment by providing direct and indirect connections to nature.

CIVIC PRESENCE

Sitting at the entrance of a wider site masterplan envisioned as a parkland, the idea of a ‘pavilion in the park’ was a key design concept for the new hospital. And this is reflected in the human-scale building form, careful composition of a simple material palette, and a landscaping strategy that promotes biophilic interactions and a harmonious relationship with the site’s context. To draw on the area’s widespread use of sandstone for important civic buildings, the predominant external cladding material is a textured, ‘multi’ light buff brick that is robust and has similar visual qualities to the surrounding local architecture. In addition, bandings of profiled glass-reinforced concrete panels are introduced to emulate the texture and solidity of stone in a crafted form. An undulating, perforated metal rainscreen is also proposed as a crown to the top storey of the building, paying homage to the historic significance of the site as part of the former Consett Steelworks.

A LONG-TERM APPROACH TO SUSTAINABILITY

The hospital has been designed to achieve a BREEAM ‘Excellent’ sustainability rating and adopts the NHS’s Net Zero Carbon standards as a guiding principle. And principles of standardisation and repeatability have been adopted to optimise efficiencies and ensure future adaptability in the building layout. The project is also committed to utilising modern methods of construction (MMC). Working alongside MMC consultants, Akerlof, the design team has adopted a framework of core principles, which include design for manufacture and assembly, and the use of prefabricated systems and offsite manufactured components. Lianne Knotts, director at Medical Architecture, said: “We are delighted to move on to the next stage in delivering this important new community hospital for the local population. “We have designed a building that is welcoming to all and that creates an environment for care that promotes wellbeing and recovery and we are now looking forward to making the plans a reality.”

The Project Team

Client: County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust

Architect: Medical Architecture

Contractor: Tilbury Douglas

M&E Engineer: A.E. Robb & Associates

Structure and Civil Engineer: Jasper Kerr

Landscape Architect: One Environments

Planning Consultant: DPP

MMC Consultant: Akerlof