Waikato Hospital, Master Planning, Hamilton, New Zealand
Sector:
Masterplanning
Client:
Waikato District Health Board, Durrow
Management Services
Role:
Consultant
Value:
NZ$200m
Status:
Completed 2008
Medical Architecture carried out a feasibility study with Durrow Management Services for Waikato Hospital. The existing hospital failed to exploit its hill views and provides few genuinely therapeutic spaces which would contribute to the wellbeing of patients and staff. The disorganisation and congestion of the site is reflected in poor legibility of the current buildings both internally and externally. Way-finding is difficult and the buildings stand in a haphazard relationship to each other.
The study gives the macro organisation of the site more emphasis. Proposed investments will add new buildings and change the point of arrival. The new buildings take the hospital from 100,000m2 to 130,000m2.
The company argues that the provision of classically useful spaces forming a well organised unity will give all generations of clinician’s maximum opportunities to organise their services. The challenge then becomes to fit current practice to it - this is also a way of validating the design flexibility. At this time we would suggest that the Waikato site is an amalgamation of a number of clinical enterprises of which the most important (by volume) are:
- Emergency assessment and treatment
- Elective diagnostic and interventions
- Women’s health, maternal health & birthing, and neonatal care
- Professional consulting
- Dynamic rehabilitation
