wiltshire + swain architects designed the St Andrews Hospital Clinical Development located in Adelaide, Australia.

Located in the South East corner of the City of Adelaide, St Andrew’s Hospital is one of Australia’s largest stand alone, independent private hospitals.

The project’s intention was to provide first class facilities and technologies to enhance service delivery for the local community and address the tension between the ‘clinical’ aspects of healthcare delivery and the ‘human dimension’ of the patient experience.

The project has been designed to integrate with the fine grained, predominately low scale residential character of the precinct. The building exterior utilises high quality materials, modulated, articulated fenestration and avoids long blank walls.

The welcoming ‘human scale’ and materiality at ground level provides an activated and visually interesting permeable edge to the public realm. The building massing provides a transition in scale and form from the taller buildings on the hospital campus to the adjacent residential neighbourhood. The landscape approach blends a corporate with a cottage garden style, providing visual interest and diversity of plantings of various heights, forms, textures and colour tones. The resultant composition significantly enhances the public realm in this location.

Reception, pre and post procedure waiting areas are light-filled with views into the adjacent landscape. Quality materials and finishes balance with clinical and infection control requirements to create a tactile, non-clinical, calming environment for patients, visitors and staff.

Wayfinding is intuitive, minimising the demand for signage and visual clutter. The reception and waiting areas provide a ‘soft’, ‘blurred’ interface between the public and clinical zones.

The design integrates family members and friends as key participants in the healing process. Patient bedrooms incorporate day beds and family zones. Numerous, variously sized lounges and an external courtyard are provided to facilitate continued contact between patients and family members.

In keeping with our design philosophy that ‘Distant Views are healing’ -opportunistic and incidental views have been programmed into the design to allow sightlines over the adjacent parklands to the Adelaide Hills and coast. Patients are encouraged to walk to the procedural zones via a light filled, vista rich, double height corridor.

Both patient privacy and local resident overviewing concerns have been managed with window treatments that direct and frame the views into and from the building. Careful planning has allowed carers to ‘drop off’ and ‘pick up’ day patients from the same location.

The design responds to Adelaide’s hot Mediterranean climate and the state of South Australia’s leadership in renewable energy and sustainability.

The building’s terracotta cladding acts as an external sunscreen with a ventilated cavity created between the cladding and insulation preventing the build-up of heat within the facade.

Socially the Hospital’s grounds already supported a community gardening group who maintain a productive vegetable garden within the Hospital. The design builds on this social capital through close consultation on planting selections and future expansion of the vegetable garden within the design.

The design also seeks to improve the health and social connectivity of Hospital staff through the creation of a staff gymnasium at ground level of the building, incorporating gym equipment and end of trip facilities for cyclists. The gym looks out onto Gilles Street, activating the street frontage.

Designer: wiltshire + swain architects
Contractor: Mossop Construction & Interiors
Project Manager: RCP
Structural / Civil Engineer: Wallbridge Gilbert Aztec
Services Engineer: System Solutions
Landscape Architect: Outerspace
Acoustic Engineer: Resonate
Photography: David Sievers