Winning cancer centre has ‘hotel-like’ quality

The winner, last November, of the Best Hospital Design award in the 2008 Better Building Healthcare Awards (HEJ – January 2009), the Northern Centre for Cancer Care and Renal Services Centre at Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital was designed by the London office of Anshen+Allen and opened to its first patients in January. It become fully operational last month. Anshen+Allen lead architect, practice director, and head of design Bahman Tavacoli, who has worked on the project since day one, six and a half years ago, heading up a team of up to six architects and designers at any one time, makes clear that the facility’s completion to such a high standard was only possible thanks to the highly effective tripartite working partnership with main contractor Laing O’Rourke and the project team at Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Collaboration from the start He explains: “Some clients I have worked with in the past have been somewhat fixed in their ideas, and unreceptive to suggestions which my team of architects and designers have genuinely thought would enhance a building or its environment. It was great here, therefore, to work with a Trust and main contractor that demonstrated a really collaborative and imaginative attitude from the outset, and were always willing to listen. Everyone involved was determined to create a building that would set the standard for this type of facility for years to come.” The new centre, which will be the North-East of England’s largest cancer treatment and renal care facility, and will take patients from throughout northern England and southern Scotland, took three and a half years to build. The £80 million development forms one “half” of a £304 million PFI project, Transforming the Newcastle Hospitals, the other element being a major modernisation and redevelopment of Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI) [see panel overleaf]. The Freeman Hospital, of which the centre now forms a key part, was originally built in the 1970s, and already boasted services ranging from general surgery, hip and knee replacement, and digital hearing aids, to the latest developments in treating complex liver, pancreatic and liver diseases. It also incorporates a regional urology centre, which reportedly runs one of Europe’s top clinical research programmes, and one of the UK’s few specialist sleep studies teams. The Trust also has an international reputation in transplant surgery for both adults and children. The new cancer care and renal services centre, whose construction was personally championed by Trust CEO Sir Len Fenwick, has a distinct identity of its own. Standing within its own attractive landscaping on the east of the site, it was, however, designed to maintain a coherent and harmonious visual relationship with the existing hospital.

Spacious courtyards Patients enter the centre via a wellproportioned entrance concourse furnished with information desk, cafe and shops, which serve both the renal and cancer units. Two spacious courtyards, one devoted to the cancer treatment centre, and the other to the renal services facility, accommodate artwork, which also features widely in the form of both paintings and modern sculptures on the walls. The courtyards provide a resting and therapeutic external space for patients, visitors and staff, while the waiting areas in both centres are located around the courtyards in “cloisters”, thus benefiting from direct natural light, and providing a connection with the outside world. They were also designed so that only a relatively small number of individuals awaiting treatment would be in each waiting area at any one time, providing sufficient company should they wish to talk to others, but also sufficient privacy and “personal space” for those preferring a quieter environment. Indeed ensuring that the new facility conveyed a welcoming, “non-threatening” feel from the moment patients stepped inside was a key goal for the design team, as Bahman Tavacoli explains: “The NCCC will be one of the UK’s most important cancer treatment centres, featuring nine linear accelerators, radiotherapy planning and simulation, imaging, chemotherapy, inpatient accommodation, and support services. However, while the clinical equipment and facilities will be state-ofthe- art, a key priority has been to give the building a welcoming feel throughout, more akin to that of a quality hotel than a hospital. Patients who will often be very ill and extremely anxious when they arrive surely deserve, in the 21st Century, to be treated in as calming, comfortable and reassuring, as well as modern and hi-tech, an environment as we can provide.