READER LETTER: An alternative vision for the new hospital

Thursday 12 November 2020

With a new hospital at Overdale likely to cost £800m and involving significant roadworks to make it possible, a local architect has shared a vision for a potentially cheaper and simpler build at Parade Gardens.

Arguing that "we sometimes need to dare to think differently and explore all the options before deciding on the path ahead", Michael Bravery outlined his plan in this letter to Express...

"Following the announcement that Overdale is Our Hospital Team’s chosen site for the new hospital, details have now been emerging daily concerning the very high costs and practical difficulties of building on this site.

It may be that, despite these problems, it remains the right choice but before ploughing on regardless I feel it is a good time to consider another possible solution which I believe offers significant advantages, including a much lower cost.

I suspect that most people would ideally prefer the hospital to remain where it is, but several proposals have already been rejected for developing the existing hospital within its own footprint. However, my impression is that this was less due to planning issues and more because of the significant disturbance to vulnerable patients, the likely disruption to the existing operations of the hospital and the length and cost of the multi-phased building works which were considered unacceptable.

I believe there is a further option that would avoid these drawbacks and which, as far as I know, has not been properly considered: that is to build on part of Parade Gardens.

Pictured: An artist's impression of my proposal to build the new hospital on Parade Gardens.

The key to unlocking this site’s potential is re-routing the ring-road traffic around it to create a site for a large new building that can be directly linked with the existing hospital.

The advantages this approach offers are:

• All of the most critical and sensitive functions of the new hospital (for example, patient wards, A&E and operating theatres, etc) could be accommodated within a brand new, detached, ‘state-of-the-art’ building with no disturbance to the existing hospital.
• Once completed, the main 1980s brick building would then be vacated and could therefore be re-fitted to accommodate most of the facilities currently contained within the maze of low-rise buildings within the southern half of the site.
• Following completion of the above stages, all the redundant sections of the hospital could then be demolished providing scope for future expansion of the hospital within its own site.
• Following demolition of the 1950s wing along Parade Gardens, the empty site, and the area in front of the original granite hospital building, would become additional public park land which would largely compensate for the loss of park area from the northern end of Parade Gardens.
• The old (listed) granite hospital could potentially be re-purposed for another public use, such as a national art gallery, and the open space around it could become a sculpture park.
• The existing Patriotic Street car park would continue to serve the new hospital and the vacant Cyril Le Marquand House could also potentially be fitted out to provide nearby admin facilities or staff accommodation.

Pictured: My idea from another angle.

Given these potential advantages, I decided to explore the design and planning implications of siting a very large detached building at the western end of Parade Gardens, as shown in the attached views taken from my 3D model. These are not intended to represent an actual building design but just to give a rough impression of scale and a possible site layout.

In this plan a new service road is proposed through the middle of the hospital site, entered from Parade Gardens and exiting onto Newgate Street. The old main road in front of the current hospital would remain in use until the new access road was operational and would then revert to a pedestrian walkway/plaza.

By allowing the hospital to expand beyond its current site footprint, I believe that this would allow a sensible phasing of the building works without disruption to the hospital. Also, by reusing the existing car park and re-fitting the more recently constructed parts of the hospital I am sure this would drastically reduce the build costs without compromising the quality of the hospital facilities.

I expect that some will consider these proposals too bold but all of the available site options present their own design and environmental challenges. I think we sometimes need to dare to think differently and explore all the options before deciding on the path ahead.

I have no personal wish to become involved with this project, but I hope this idea will be given serious consideration by those tasked with moving this project forward."

Michael Bravery, Chartered Architect
St. Martin