Sixteen successful candidates selected as finalists in the 2012 Architects for Health (AfH) Student Design Awards recently participated in a week of seminars, tutored studios, and site visits in London, including to St Thomas’s Hospital in south London.
As part of a Charette Week (a charette is defined as ‘a collaborative session in which designers craft a solution to a specific problems’) sponsored by Mace, the London South Bank University Medical Architecture Research Unit (MARU), and the Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. Their itinerary included a personal tour of Trust paediatric healthcare sites by Guy’s and St Thomas’ estates director, Alastair Gourlay. At a celebratory evening at the Architecture Studio at the London South Bank University, RIBA President, Angela Brady, and Mace director for the Public Sector, David Rumsey, presented the 2012 Student Design prize to a winning team comprising students, Syndsey Ballet, Anthony Delleur, Tom Macaviney, and Anna Meredith. The team had prepared what the judges described as ‘an exciting proposal’ for new paediatric ambulatory care centre for the St Thomas’ site opposite the Palace of Westminster in response to the Charette brief (the Charette is the latest incarnation of the AfH Student Awards, now in their fifth year). Jaime Bishop, of Fleet Architects, one of the Charette’s organisers at AfH, said: “We were delighted with the outcome; we set the students a near impossibly tight programme of events and tasks. The work is refreshing, and certainly challenges perceptions of healthcare design.”
