National Heart Centre Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

Firm appointed to £73 million heart Centre
Broadway Malyan has been appointed to a £73 million project to design a new building for the National Heart Centre Singapore. The appointment gives the firm’s new Singapore office, which opened last year, a significant boost.

The 35,299 sq m building will play part of the wider masterplanning for the redevelopment of Singapore General Hospital’s Outram Campus and is designed in conjunction by the company’s Singapore and Weybridge offices and in collaboration with Ong & Ong Architects.

“The building’s design has been born out of a multi-disciplinary process focussing on the social, economic, environmental and technological requirements of the National Heart Centre Singapore,” commented Jason Pomeroy, director for Broadway Malyan’s Singapore office. “Fundamental to this is our ethos for the building - Placing People First – a philosophy which will ensure the needs of the individual are met at the Centre in their everyday working, living, playing and healing lives, be they the patient, doctor or visitor.”

The majority of visitors and patients will enter the ten storey building via a spacious, naturally lit concourse area. This will lead into a large and welcoming reception including information and quarantine zone plus retail shops and cafes, via which department reception areas and the upper levels of the hospital can be reached.

The operational layout of the building has been set to minimise travel distances for patients and staff. The first six floors of the building will contain facilities for a day surgery, operating theatres, clinics, laboratories, radiology and retail facilities. Levels seven to ten have appropriately been designated for non-patient areas including medical records, research laboratories, staff training, a library and administrative offices.

Providing social connectivity, the building will feature a collection of different healthcare related and social functions arranged, like a collegiate, around open spaces not dissimilar to the medicinal courtyard gardens of the Middle Ages. These internal and external open spaces are designed to expedite healing via the provision of natural light, ventilation and views for patients while also providing planting that acts as a carbon sponge, noxious pollutant filter and heat island reducer. The internal open spaces have also been maximised to encourage footfall through the building’s open spaces creating heightened opportunities for social interaction and increased drive to retail opportunities, while also improving operational efficiency for staff and mitigating visitor and patient anxiety via the provision of clear routes through the Centre.

Recognising the often swift advances in medical and healthcare technologies, the structure of the building is flexible and adaptable to change both internally and externally.

Utilising modern methods of modularization to facilitate and ease the speed of construction, it is expected that, subject to planning approval, demolition works for the new Heart Centre will begin in September 2009 with build completion expected in Spring 2012.
source: www.worldarchitecturenews.com
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