Photography by Richard Glover.
Located on a prominent site within Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital Campus, the 28,000m2 Clinical Services Building is visited by thousands of local residents every year. Designed to complement the $1.6bn Acute Services Building, it comprises maternity, paediatric, neonatal intensive care, burns and general ward units. Also included is a secure mental health facility, accessed via its own entrance and operated independently of the other functions.
The client brief presented a unique opportunity to re-imagine how a hospital building is designed and how spatial adaptability may be ensured over time as the clinical users needs change. Faced with a technically complex brief, our approach leverages a commercial office model where clinical departments are treated as tenancies that are intended to adapt without effecting the operation of others. The brief also demanded that the structure, façade solution and internal layout be designed to accommodate additional floors should the building undergo a major refit.
Building Studio completed the design and documentation of the building’s shell and core in 2014, with the internal design completed by clinical planning specialists.