Anshen & Allen Associates, Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners and Laing O'Rourke Construction are the winning team in the competition to design a new Cancer Treatment Centre for Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust.
Launched in February this year, the competition sought teams with the capacity and imagination to design and deliver a "world-class facility" that would provide an outstanding patient experience and working environment. The new building will be the first in a phased development that will ultimately produce an Integrated Cancer Centre, combining first-class clinical care with groundbreaking medical research. Architects and contractors were required to collaborate from day one, and the competition followed a multi-stage process which at the final stage invited teams to come up with design concepts for the new building.
Anshen Allen/Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners/Laing O'Rourke's winning design is based around the idea of breaking the building down into five three-storey 'villages' stacked up on the corner of the site. The judges concluded this to be an intelligent and well-considered design, offering a clear strategy that will allow the building to respond to short, mid- and long-term change.
Speaking of the winning design, RIBA Adviser and Jury Panel member Simon Allford said "This proposal stood out in a very committed competition because of the clarity and strength of its organisational and architectural vision. The delightful idea about villages, breaks down the institutional model for medical facilities, is robust enough to survive stakeholder reviews and promises a building of great style, dignity and humanity."
The competition allowed teams to engage with the client team, clinical staff, and end users of the building during the design phase. An extensive consultation exercise was held before the final judging session. As well as the 'village' idea, a key attraction of the winning scheme was its open and welcoming feel, and consideration of human scale for the user.
"The Trust's aim is to provide a world class clinical service for our cancer patients and this design will make a significant contribution towards achieving that," said Alastair Gourlay, Programme Director for Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. "The designers have shown a depth of understanding of the patient's experience with an architectural honesty that defines the way the building looks.
I want to congratulate all of the teams that took part in the competition for the quality of their design proposals - they captured the imagination of patients, staff and our local stakeholders who gave us invaluable feedback that helped us to make our decision on the winning scheme."
"We are delighted to be part of a team to design a new cancer treatment centre for one of the UK's leading hospitals," commented Richard Rogers, of Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners. "Our previous work on the Maggie's Centre in London has helped us to understand the needs of people with cancer. Our approach to the CTC for Guy's and St Thomas' goes beyond conventional thinking on hospital design and makes the experience of dealing with cancer as relaxed as possible for both patients and staff."