Health & Wellbeing

Forth Valley Acute Hospital

Brief

The need for this new acute hospital resulted from the reconfiguration of services in the Forth Valley, leading to the down sizing of the facilities in Stirling and Falkirk to Community Hospital status.  The brief was to provide eight hundred beds, fifty percent in single bedrooms, sixteen operating theatres with full supporting facilities, a women and children's hospital and a linked mental health facility.  Emphasis was placed on accessibility and control of infection.  The site was set within mature woodland and was previously occupied by the Royal Scottish National Hospital.

Response

The hospital has been designed as a collection of 'districts', each with its own identity and own "front door" but with clinical links and pedestrian routes internally.  The blocks are separated by landscaped courtyards, allowing natural light and ventilation to the majority of areas.  Outpatient departments and lifts to wards are accessed from an atrium and "main street" adjoining the main entrance, limiting travel distance for patients and visitors.

Services are physically segregated from patient flows, with deliveries made by automated guided vehicles, or robots, to designated points in each department or ward.  The design for the hospital builds on the concept of districts and squares.  The main streets link the wards, treatment and diagnostic facilities and courtyard spaces together.

Outcome

The backbone of streets allows an architectural response to suit the departmental activity including the segregation of visitor, patient, staff and facilities management movement, leading to a continuing change in the character of the hospital.  The division of the building into blocks, with their own entrances, provides a human scale and simple internal routes with views to courtyards or surrounding woodland.  From the upper levels there are long distance views to the Ochil Hills and the Forth Valley.  Full use has been made of the mature landscaping, with any trees that have been removed replaced by appropriate indigenous species and the creation of ponds as part of the surface water drainage system.

Team