David Lewis, Principal and design lead for the London studio of international design and architecture firm, NBBJ, and part of the Carillion consortium designing the new Royal Liverpool University Hospital with HKS for The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust.
Describes how the masterplan will seek to more clearly define the urban space of the street, restore public access to the centre of the site, and ‘knit’ the hospital more fully into fabric of Liverpool than is the case with the current,1970s-built, Royal Liverpool University Hospital.
Since the founding of the NHS, hospital design often seems categorically opposed to good urban planning. To accommodate state-of-the-art procedures and high numbers of patients, acute care hospitals, in particular, must often occupy extremely large facilities on large sites, paying little regard to the surrounding city. These large, impermeable ‘superblocks’ are now widely considered detrimental to the life of the city. Contemporary urban planning instead favours small blocks, walkable pedestrian districts, and a fine grain of uses, which would seem to be incompatible with large acute care hospitals. However, hospitals and cities are not at such odds as it seems. Planned correctly, a hospital can heal the fabric of the city outside, just as it heals patients inside.
Liverpool is a vibrant city undergoing a renaissance, although, like many British cities, it also has areas that need repairing. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the current site of the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, and in its changes over time.
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