“The recently complete Walkergate Hospital in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne is providing a revolutionary combination of facilities for people with neurological disabilities, and a therapeutic physical environment that is being studied for its impact on patient outcomes.”
BD features Walkergate Park in March. Completed by Team Bentley, this unique facility is receiving lots of praise. Have a look at the article here
Wk 31 of the programme, completion set for June 2008. This view of the rear gable shows the pre treated Thermowood battens and cladding from Finn Forest, being fixed inplace. It is expected the timber will fade slightly, but should not lose as much of its original colour as Cedar for instance. Areas of this cladding have been treated for spread of flame, due to the proximity of adjacent (mostly glazed) squash courts. We have resisted the urge to infill the panels with render for the mock Tudor look.
A view from the main staircase across the first floor. Eventually internal partitioning will obscure this view, but we can see the insulation inplace across the entire floor, prior to the Under floor heating pipes being laid.
Ryan Meadows and Joe Stenson, P+HS’s very own little and large, visit site. This was Joe’s first site visit with P+HS, where as Ryan was dragged out to answer for some of his handy work.
We had plenty of entries at the Stokesley Office and everyone pushed the limits of their artistic talents, but there could be only one winner of the giant chocolate Easter bunny. . .
. . . and the winner is Eamon with his eggcellent Homer Egg, apparently he’s eggstatic!
Congratulations, don’t eat it all at once!
CABE and the Housing Corporation have announced a new toolkit developed to help housing clients and their design teams demonstrate to planners and funding agencies how their development proposals will meet Building for Life standards.
Building for Life standards have now been adopted by both the Corporation and English Partnerships and increasing numbers of local authorities are now demanding that house builders must fulfil a majority of the 20 Building for Life criteria.
CABE, which developed the toolkit for the Corporation, says the aim is to get all sides using the same design language to assess proposals. The guidance provides examples of design-related material - diagrams, plans, visuals and models - clients can include in grant application tenders or design and access statements.
The Corporation, for its part, says it also regards the toolkit as an assessment tool that will help funding bodies and planners judge whether proposals are up to scratch.
The new toolkit, entitled ‘Evaluating housing principles step by step,’ is available to download for free from http://www.buildingforlife.org/
Just to reiterate Tom’s thanks to everyone for their input on our last project.
Just wanted to say thanks to all the staff who sat in on my university project design review and contributed valuable feedback. Whilst there is still more work to be done, the project is basically over and passed as smoothly as I could have hoped. So thanks very much everyone, cheers for the help.
Heathrow Airport’s controversial Terminal 5 is set to be opened by the Queen in a ceremony involving hundreds of airport and construction workers. The £4.3bn terminal offers extra passenger capacity although the number of flights will not increase after it opens for business on 27 March.
Operator BAA says it will “transform” the level of service at the airport.
Environmental and residents groups who have opposed it say it will lead to more flights, noise and pollution.
The Queen, who in 1955 opened the airport’s first terminal building, what is now Terminal 2, will be accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh along with 800 invited guests, including hundreds of airport and construction workers involved in the project.
Some 60,000 people have worked a total of 100 million man hours to build Terminal 5 since construction began in September 2002!
Built on the site of a former sludge works at the western end of the existing airport, Terminal 5 has been designed by 2006 Stirling Prize winners Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners.
Its construction has involved diverting two rivers, building what is claimed to be the UK’s largest free-standing building and tunnelling 13km for rail and baggage links.
The complex includes 50 new aircraft stands, which will rise to 60 by 2010, two satellite buildings, one of which is still to be completed, rail links to London Underground and the Heathrow Express, and a new multi-storey car park. Friday’s official opening is of the project’s Phase 1, including Terminals 5A and 5B. Phase 2, which adds Terminal 5C, is set to open in 2010.
Having told BSF schools designers to try harder, CABE is prescribing an increased dose of high quality design for the NHS LIFT programme for primary health care centres. The design champion has also called for schemes falling below its ‘excellent’ benchmark for design criteria not to be approved for construction. CABE surveyed a sample of 20 out of 82 LIFT projects completed between 2002 and 2006 and concluded that only 40% of its design criteria - looking at functionality, build quality and impact - scored ‘good’ and better. Only 7% of design criteria actually met its excellent rating. The agency has also called for project delivery teams to be strengthened through more design training and the support of committed client design advisors.
‘The LIFT programme is the NHS’s biggest ever investment in improving and developing premises for primary and community frontline services, so every one of those new buildings should contribute positively to the health and well-being of the local community,’ says Mairi Johnson, CABE’s interim director of enabling. ‘Great schemes such as the Heart of Hounslow and the Plowright Surgery in Norfolk show the kind of quality we want to see routinely.’
Good design features of the buildings surveyed included a single reception point on entering a building, which can offer an early welcome and easy orientation and generous amounts of light and ventilation. Areas of design weakness found in the sample survey include prioritising maintenance over the quality of the patient environment, resulting in the use of materials that create an overly institutional atmosphere.
The briefing paper ‘Assessing design quality in LIFT primary care buildings’ can be found here.
