The Leeds General Infirmary site has offered hospital services throughout the past 250 years. Housing a new adults’ hospital and a new home for Leeds Children’s Hospital, the new development will carry on this tradition in a modern setting and act as a flagship for future hospital design.
The hospital’s contemporary design facilitates innovation, technology, and research in an environment encouraging collaboration across different professions. It aims at inspiring the approximately 8000 employees in their daily work offering the best treatment methods possible.
The design of the hospital not only focuses on optimising workstreams and creating a good working environment that stimulates knowledge sharing. It will also offer an alternative to the clinical world of medicine by creating spaces for well-being. The design is rooted in the tradition of healing architecture, supported by research showing how our physical surroundings greatly impact our mental and bodily well-being. Spaces which offer a comfortable and generous setting will act as catalysts for various activities and socialising; as breathing spaces, where illness and stress become secondary. Indoors, patient bedrooms are adjustable to fit individual preferences, while common rooms are designed to shape friendships and be used for non-illness related purposes.
The hospital has a user-focused and adaptable design. It sports a modular façade with the possibility of prefabrication. Heat recovery, high insulation values, low air leakage, solar panels and significant on-site energy production contribute to a sustainable BREEAM 2018 Excellent and WELL V2 Platinum certified hospital. A hospital which, additionally, is projected as a net zero ready building. The many outdoor terraces and the plaza will contribute to Leeds’s green profile and to biodiversity in the area through its use of native planting.
