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Aldershot’s trail-blazing new Centre for Health – complete with a spectacular commemorative artwork – has been unveiled by developers The Wilky Group.
The Aldershot Centre for Health, where services will be shared between the NHS and the military, is the largest primary healthcare centre in the UK and represents a huge investment for the area. When it opens in August the facility will serve a population of 45,000 and a wider catchment area of 250,000. It is the first in the country to integrate civilian and military healthcare and it includes three GP practices, diagnostics, outpatient treatment, administrative offices and a retail pharmacy.
Around 150 guests, many of whom were involved in the project, were invited by Wilky to the handing over of the newly completed artwork and to tour the centre. They included Professor Jonathan Montgomery, chairman of Hampshire Primary Care Trust, Brigadier Tim Finnegan, director of Army Primary Healthcare and the Mayor of Rushmoor, Alan Ferrier.
The specially designed work of art - a spherical mobile with 500 square glass ‘leaves’ representing the Tree of Life - is suspended over the atrium at the heart of the Centre for Health. The Tree of Life theme represents the nurturing role of the health centre and alludes to the original meaning of the word ‘Aldershot’, which is a wood of alder trees.
Commissioned by The Wilky Group and co-sponsored by SR Architects, who designed the centre, the art project was managed by internationally acclaimed sculptor Joanna Migdal and her curator husband George White, who brought in two rising young British artists to work on it. Hannah McVicar created the colourful images of flora and fauna on the leaves and the structure was designed by George Saunders-Singer.
Wilky Group chief executive Malcolm Young paid tribute to Hampshire PCT and the Army. “Together they entrusted us to deliver their shared vision for new and improved healthcare for the combined community in Aldershot and the wider area of the Blackwater Valley.”
He said the delivery of the development has been a triumph of co-operation between the private and public sectors and thanked Defence Estates, Rushmoor Borough Council, local MP Gerald Howarth, the Aldershot Civic Society and others who had provided support at critical times. He also praised the “genius” of the architect Sohrab Rustomjee.
Professor Montgomery said that the project had been distinguished by the robustness of the partnerships involved. The centre, he said, represented the importance of the NHS being a ‘good neighbour’ within the community. It gave dedicated NHS staff the work environment they deserved and it offered better access to the type of health care the community was entitled to expect.
Proposing a toast to the patients and clinicians who would use the centre, and the potential the building held for them, Brigadier Finnegan said it was a “first class” addition to the Army’s medical services.
Wilky has leased the centre to Hampshire Primary Care Trust and the MoD for 30 years, after which they will buy the building for the symbolic sum of one pound.
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Caption: Malcolm Young, chief executive of The Wilky Group, Brigadier Tim Finnegan, director of Army Primary Healthcare, the Mayor of Rushmoor, Cllr Alan Ferrier and Professor Jonathan Montgomery, chairman of Hampshire Primary Care Trust with the ‘Tree of Life’ mobile in the background.
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