Demolishing a Victorian hospital and designing a £32 million health centre in its place would appear to present the architect with a blank canvas.
However, Birkenhead’s new St Catherine’s Health Centre not only had to interact with the Grade II listed church close by, but also to be erected alongside the old, still functioning, hospital.
Architect Jason Whittall, of One Creative Environments, selected over 3,000 m2 of Trespa Meteon façade panels. Creating an internal atrium ‘street’ with five wings off it, he then colour-coded each wing inside and out for ease of navigation. “We had to accommodate so many departments that the external elevation design played second fiddle to the internal layouts,” he explained. “Windows were located for functionality, so I needed a system that allowed me to bring some sense of order to an otherwise random façade.”
Having used the dark of the windows with white and grey Trespa Meteon panels to echo the idea of a DNA fingerprint, the architect incorporated a different-coloured panel into each wing. He added: “The ability to achieve the façade DNA idea with no visible fixings was also a huge benefit.”
