Health, Habitats and Hubs
Health, Habitats and Hubs – Healthcare, Design, Sustainability and the Natural Environment
A Fourth Door Micro symposium – 14.00 – 18.00 – May 21st 2022
Fitzroy House, Lewes, BN7 2AD (Search Fitzroy House, Lewes)
Tickets £10/ £2.50 benefits/students – Register on Eventbrite
An in-depth look at the afternoon symposium, including biographical overviews of the speakers
An afternoon micro-symposium focused on the relationships between healthcare design and architecture and the built and natural environments, aimed at nurturing the conversation around Lewes’s new Foundry Health Hub, part of the town’s Phoenix development, and the wider NHS health infrastructure. The afternoon will be chaired by Sunand Prasad.
Speakers bio/overview
Sunand Prasad is Principal, Perkins&Will and co- founder of Penoyre & Prasad (now part of Perkins&Will) which have a long track record in hospital and healthcare design projects.
In Depth
The studio are currently part of consortia for two major hospital projects, the Leeds Hospital of the Future (comprising Leeds Children’s Hospital and a new adult hospital) and Project Oriel, an entirely new hospital complex for London’s Moorfields Eye Hospital. Across a broad portfolio of public sector work, recent health projects have included the New QUII Hospital, Welwyn, and the Children’s Eye Centre, Moorfields Eye Hospital. Prasad has maintained a focus on sustainability in his work, is current chair of the UK Green Building Council and is a past president of RIBA. He has written and edited many books and papers, including editing Future Healthcare Design (2020.)
Laura Lee is CEO of Maggies, the network of UK centres which provides support to people with cancer as well as family and friends.
In Depth –
Named after and founded by landscape designer Maggie Keswick Jencks, and her and architectural theorist husband, Charles Jencks, after Keswick Jencks was diagnosed with advanced cancer, (and told the news while waiting in an Edinburgh hospital corridor.) Maggie’s has championed empathic architecture supporting patients through an approach that focuses on the hearth-like warmth of sensitively designed environments by British and internationally renowned architects. Lee was Keswick Jencks’ personal nurse, and became involved, before being asked by the Keswick Jencks to lead the project before her death in 1995. In over 25 years 24 Maggies have been opened, representing what Charles Jencks called ‘the architecture of hope.’
Angel Tenorio is a Peruvian architect working at London’s Heatherwick Design and was project architect on the studio’s Leeds Maggies Centre.
In Depth –
The centre highlights and integrates one of founder Thomas Heatherwick’s signature design approaches, the natural environment, through a roof garden, extensive landscaping outside and plants inside. It is also one of the first Heatherwick’s projects designed and built with timber, with the studio emphasising their crafted approaches across different aspects of the building. Tenorio, who led the project to completion, will talk about these different aspects of the project.
Meredith Bowles is founder and principal of Mole Architects, who are responsible for the design of the Foundry Health Hub on the Lewes Phoenix Project site.
In Depth –
With their offices in Cambridge, Mole Architects have developed a national reputation, consistently winning national awards for their projects, and developing a profile for sustainability. Most recently they have received plaudits for the Marmalade Lane, a Co-Housing project in Cambridge, and have designed another Cambridge health centre, although this has yet to be completed.
Gemma Jerome is the director of Building with Nature, a national benchmark and accreditation system for green infrastructure.
In Depth –
She is an environmental planner specialising in the delivery, management and maintenance of development that puts nature at the heart of its decision-making. Building with Nature (BwN) is the UK’s first Standards Framework for high-quality green infrastructure and provides the sector with guidance to create nature sensitive places for people and wildlife. Jerome has co-chaired the British Standards Institute panel for Biodiversity Net Gain standard, sits on the advisory group for the Natural England Green Infrastructure Standards Project, and is a Fellow of the Landscape Institute.
Ed Rosen is Founding Director of Lambeth GP Food Co-op Since 2013 it has built food growing gardens in GP surgeries, King’s College Hospital and Guy’s & St Thomas’ Hospital where unused space has been transformed into flourishing and convivial places for staff and patients.
In Depth –
The NHS has recognised Lambeth GP Food Co-op for its work in sustainable food growing and patient involvement in health. In 2021 it was shortlisted for the award of small multi stakeholder Co-op of the Year by the Co-op Bank. Ed had national and regional roles in the NHS including educating Doctors at the London Deanery and educating the wider health workforce as Head of Learning at the NHS University (NHSU).’
The Micro-Symposium – What is it, and why.
Health, Habitats and Hubs has been organised with the intention of providing an up to the moment holistic overview of the healthcare design world, given that in the aftermath of the intense experience of Covid, with the Climate Emergency becoming increasingly pressing, and with the responsiveness of many communities to new approaches to design, this is an opportune moment to explore and highlight various overlapping and connected healthcare and design threads.
At the heart of the afternoon symposium is the objective of raising interest and inspiration regarding the relationships between health and healthcare design and the broader built environment, alongside the potential benefits of natural environments for health outcomes and in wider wellness contexts.
A core theme of the Health, Habitats and Hubs afternoon is to illustrate contrasting ways drawing in nature, and health projects connecting patients with the natural environment can support those recovering from surgery and myriad ill-health at the physical and mental levels. Exemplar’s span growing productive gardens in GP surgeries, creating landscape design for NHS Hospital estates with nature in mind, and nature’s integration into the welcome hearth-like warmth of a Maggie’s Cancer Centre environment. It is hoped that the afternoon will help spark interest and further nurture conversation regarding these crossover themes both specifically, regarding the town’s new healthcare facility, and more generally, across the broader NHS healthcare landscape. The afternoon will also provide a window into the Government’s major Hospital and healthcare build programme – Penoyre-Prasad are designing two of the Government’s current NHS Hospital for the Future programme and Sunand Prasad will address this programme in his presentation – and the potential for ‘closer to nature’ approaches happening across scales.
Sunand Prasad will also chair the afternoon.
Fourth Door Review, the green cultural review, and its online magazine, Unstructured, have highlighted the themes of the symposium in features and articles over the years. These include:
The tenderness of timber – Maggies Oldham by dRMM Architects, Unstructured extra 9 2018
Birth of a Swahili Woman’s Centre – Jenny Reuter from HollmenReuterSandmann Architects tells the story of the ground up health care project – 2016, Ground Up Architecture, Fourth Door Review 9
World citizens re-engaging with locality and vernacular – Toh-Shimazaki Architects Centre for Sight health centre in East Grinstead – 2011, Design with Care/Unstructured
Design with Care: themed edition focused on the healthcare design, architecture and sustainability at the time of the last NHS new hospitals building programme in the mid-2000’s – Fourth Door Review 7 (2005)
Features included:
Softening the Blow - Overview of the latest in healthcare design circa mid 2000′s featuring the Maggie network and the emergence of sustainability in research and newbuild in the NHS.
Jencks on the Maggie network ‘so far’ Charles Jencks writes about the first eight years of the Maggie’s Centres
Gehry@Maggies Dundee – Frank Gehry interview feature on his timber Dundee Maggie’s Centre
Matter Matters – Fionn Stevenson on the sustainability, the senses and healthcare design
Prognosis for a newbuild NHS - Far reaching NHS estate changes in healthcare design strategies by Susan Francis
The Tenderness of Wood - The Inverness Maggies Centre by Glasgow’s Page & Park
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