Kristen reports in on the new Royal Children's Hospital in World Health Design.
The Age newspaper features Melbourne’s most promising young architects including Eugene Cheah, Associate Director, Bates Smart.
Cheah's latest project for Bates Smart is the Dandenong Hospital Emergency Department and Mental Health facility. Both departments are due to open this month.
There is more to this spectacular sculpture than meets the eye.
The “Creature” by Melbourne artist Alexander Knox has been conceived as an integral part of the Royal Children's Hospital's main internal street with a presence somewhat akin to a great flowering tree in a courtyard.
Pictured: Prince Philip, Henry Bolte, Queen Elizabeth, and Dame Elisabeth Murdoch at the opening of the new Royal Children's Hospital, 25 February 1963
The New Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, was officially opened by Her Majesty, The Queen on Wednesday 26th October. As patron of the RCH The Queen also opened the existing hospital in 1963.
Bates Smart Directors, Kristen Whittle, Sheree Proposch and Jeff Copolov attended the opening along with other key team members and Chairman Roger Poole.
HM Queen Elizabeth II opened the $1.1b new Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH), Melbourne on October 26, 2011 five years after the release of the initial Public Private Partnership (PPP) bid. The 165,000sqm facility is likely to set a new design benchmark for hospitals worldwide.
Bates Smart Director Sheree Proposch describes the event:
"The Queen and Prince Philip toured the facility, including the Emergency Department which features a two level aquarium, the Ambulatory Care Clinics with meerkat enclosure, the Operating Theatres with inter-operative MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), and the 'starfish shaped' inpatient unit.
"The Queen was particularly taken by the meercats and their ability to distract and entertain children.
Bates Smart has a history of successful commissions of artwork to enliven the built environment. This has never been more apparent than in the new Royal Children’s Hospital.
Bates Smart Director Kristen Whittle talks about the evolution of the distinctive facades at the Royal Children's Hospital, "Gardens have been proven to be a natural source of restoration.
Director Sheree Proposch explains "The RCH masterplan challenge was to assemble the component parts, using narrow floor plates, to closely connect to the external environment, and achieve the functional relationships with minimal travel distances.
The Bates Smart team worked closely with a dedicated team of healthcare professionals from the bid phase in 2006 through to completion in 2011.
Bates Smart Director Sheree Proposch explains that an Emergency Department (ED) is in effect a ‘front door’ of a hospital, whereby around one third of the patients could eventually require admittance to the inpatient unit.
It is an environment with high levels of emotion and activity, multidisciplinary diagnostics and complex decision making.
“It was a great privilege and a remarkable experience to work with a dedicated team of design and healthcare professionals on the new Royal Children’s Hospital, which I believe will become a significant public building for Melbourne and Victoria.” says Leanne Guy.
"The Royal Children's Hospital project was a deeply complex and rich experience," says Mark Healey.
"The Public Private Partnership(PPP) process was a new experience for most, but one which ultimately produced a remarkable product which will serve Melbourne and Victoria's children for many years to come.
Lead design architect Mirjana Sazunic has spent the past 4 years on the RCH project and found the experience to be both profoundly challenging and rewarding.
The great children’s hospitals of the world are no longer designed around a premise of catering just for the sick child, but rather providing facilities which are inviting and fun, yet provide a sense of control for parents and families, are supportive and promote healthy living.
Andrew Raftopoulos, Jacinta Tessari and Andrew Francis share their different experiences of working on RCH.
Yes it is official: the new RCH has been opened by HRH Queen Elizabeth II with the Duke of Edinburgh and many other dignitaries. It was on a perfect, sunny, blue sky, Melbourne spring day and was broadcast on national television.
Working on the new RCH from schematic design right through to technical completion has been the most rewarding and challenging experience.
In today’s age, sustainable design involves reducing a buildings carbon footprint but also the longevity and quality of the built solution.
Bates Smart Director Kristen Whittle discusses the challenge of creating a wholly sustainable healthcare building. `The new RCH has created a significant benchmark for hospital design worldwide where the highest standards of human comfort and sustainable design have combined to create a truly holistic built form solution.
The 25,000sqm of workplace created for the Royal Children’s Hospital teams, the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and the University of Melbourne within the new Royal Children’s Hospital represents a fresh new direction in workplace design within healthcare environments.
The striking 14m high colourful, curling, tentacled sculpture, known as ‘Creature’, is immediately visible upon entry to the internal ‘Street’.
It is a key wayfinding landmark, strategically placed outside Ambulatory Care, the busiest department in the hospital.
After millennia in natural environments, humans have contrived to develop urban communities of great convenience, but with little of the soft natural fascination of our ancestors’ environment.
Parkland gives us back the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the pleasing, recuperative qualities of nature, engendering the simultaneous combinations of rest and stimulation which can aid healing.
The strong nexus created between nature and architecture in the concept design posed some huge challenges to the design team in translating the inspirational images into a built form.
The Royal Children's Hospital has won the Grand Prix and the Commercial Interior awards at the 2012 Dulux Colour Awards, just announced.
Jesper Nyborg is the recipient of the RMIT Bates Smart Graduate Prize for Interior Design for 2011. Here Jesper explains his award winning final year project 'Remote Intimacy'.
The Royal Children’s Hospital in Victoria has been judged the nation’s best infrastructure project at Infrastructure Partnerships Australia’s National Infrastructure Awards.
No less than five Bates Smart projects have been shortlisted in the 2012 Property Council Innovation and Excellence Awards to be announced later this month.
Bates Smart is delighted to announce The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne has won the following four awards at the 2012 Australian Interior Design Awards: The Premier Award for Interior Design Excellence and Innovation; Public Design Award; Colour in Commercial Design Award and best in State Commercial Design Award.
We are delighted to announce that Fairfax Media House, Melbourne has been awarded the 2012 Innovation and Excellence Awards, Victorian Development of the Year.
The Innovation and Excellence Awards showcase Australia’s finest, celebrates innovation and leading practice within the property development and investment industries.