For the first time Michael Hopkins and Partners design a hospital, and as such, they preferred to think in terms of other building types, in particular offices and hotels, in order to break away from the typical of endless corridors and dull, airless wards. The project was emphasized by two key principles: to design a hospital that doesn’t feel like a hospital, and to greatly improve the patient, staff and family experience. The resulting building has barely changed from the original concept. A hospital that doesn’t feel like a hospital from the earliest drafts the design team responded to feedbacks from children who disliked the institutional atmosphere of hospitals and wanted light, color and fun.

Key themes and architectural features of the Evelina Children Hospital reflect their views without compromising clinical efficiency. In fact, the plans were also designed in serious consultation with medical teams to ensure that the design met and, in some cases, exceeded NHS guidelines. The new hospital is an isolated 7-storey, glass-cladded building, incorporating a massive glass roof to create a 4-storey high, south-facing glazed conservatory. This highly visible atrium is the social heart of the new hospital, which has been carefully designed to be flexible so that it can accommodate a number of different activities.

It will include the Evelina Hospital School, a café, waiting area, gallery and a performance space. The most interesting feature of the space is adaptable for play sessions, classes, exhibitions, a library and even small theatrical productions. All inpatient wards are placed on the upper levels of the building so that children staying in the hospital are able not only to look down into the busy conservatory, but also enjoy the most spectacular views across the London skyline.

Set at 3^rd-floor level, where it can take advantage of views over the gardens of Lambeth Palace to the south and east, the conservatory is overlooked on the north side by three floors of wards and a top floor of staff offices. The 18 meters wide, air-conditioned ward floors are divided longitudinally into three zones: single bedrooms are situated on the north side, open wards and day spaces are on the conservatory side and services spaces, such as nurses’ stations and utility rooms, are in between. An open-sided circulation route takes the place of the usual straight corridor.

Michael Hopkins designed the project carefully, combining information from extensive workshop sessions involving health care professionals, hospital staff, children and their families with experience taken from work in many architectural sectors, to create an inspiring, uplifting design that draws the best possible use of an awkward site and fully meets clinical needs. More specialized medical functions, such as outpatient clinics, therapy rooms and operating theatres, occupy the 3-storey (plus basement) podium below atrium level. The compact, 36 meters deep floor plans are made legible and given breathing space by a spacious hall at each level, pierced by generous light wells through which the conservatory above can be glimpsed.

The main public entrance to the Evelina Children Hospital, off Lambeth Palace Road, is at the east end of the ground floor hall and there is a secondary entrance at the west end, off the main hospital street. Like the conservatory, the ground floor hall is large enough to accommodate performance spaces and play structures as well as the main reception area. Two ‘wall climber rocket’ lifts rise through the light wells into the conservatory and continue upwards to serve the ward floors.

Michael Hopkins emphasizes flexibility in this building.The structure is precast concrete, on a 9 by 7.2 meter column grid, largely dictated by the optimum width for a ward. Raised floors were ruled out on maintenance and hygiene grounds so horizontal services are distributed above suspended ceilings. Standard floor slabs have cast-in slots for local service connections. Highly serviced rooms such as kitchens and toilets will be made as pre-fabricated pods which can be repositioned if and when the building is replanned. Visually, the most important element of the building is the wrap-around conservatory wall and roof with its steel diagrid structure and frameless glass skin. In winter, it will provide a passive solar collector and in summer, natural, stack effect ventilation will prevent excessive heat gain.

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