Design

The prestigious Aldershot Centre for Health brings together a series of multifunctional uses into a large healthcare complex on a brown field site at Hospital Hill, Aldershot. 

A total of 27 user groups were to be accommodated within the building; all with their individual specific functional requirements and demands for space and location, and this brief was further complicated by the natural restrictions of the site which included steep slopes, heavily wooded areas, limited access and constraints on building height due to proximity to military establishments.

SR Architects, and designers of the building, met the brief in an impressive four storey building located neatly at the crest of Hospital Hill, in the north-western most corner of the site. The building is partly sunken into the ground, allowing its overall height and size to be concealed whilst providing the main entrance at what is effectively the first floor. This minimises perceived travel distances within the building, whilst also allowing secondary access to departments on the lowest floor for practical reasons.

“What could have been a utilitarian solution to a complex brief is, in reality, an elegant building with a lightness of touch and clarity of planning.”

Sohrab Rustomjee of SR Architects

Parking for over 300 cars is generally to the south of the building within a series of decked arrangements which are cut into the slope and shielded by the existing mature vegetation around the western and southern fringes of the site. This arrangement provides an open vista of the town beyond, clear of cars and with a lush backdrop of vegetation along the entrance route to the front door.

The building itself has been designed as two linear and parallel blocks, broken up to reduce its overall perceived size with a rhythmical layering of materials; red brickwork, silver metal panels and a ring of glass to the top-most floor has been used and the linear blocks have themselves then been cranked into a shallow ‘v’ form to acknowledge the shape, contours, and landscape features around it. Two central circulation and communication cores rise between these blocks and are expressed externally by two large rooftop plant rooms. Lower down, the main entrance is a centrally placed prominent and dynamic red-bricked ‘pod’ with glass and stainless steel canopy. From here, visitors are led to the centre of the building between the two circulation cores where a waiting hall, top-lit by a roof lantern, allows visitors to orientate their way to the various departments from this double height space.

Public facilities are on levels 1-3 with administrative accommodation housed in a ring of glass on the top floor. Above this are gently curving roof forms to the north and south perimeters. Projecting staircases also in brick provide feature stop ends to external walls which are otherwise horizontal facades.

SR Architects have provided a contemporary facility that reflects the functional requirements of the users within a warm and welcoming environment.

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