The Fetal Medicine Centre
by A21 Architects
Client The Fetal Medicine Foundation
Awards RIBA London Award 2017
This brightly-lit, meticulously-detailed and generous Foundation for Fetal Medicine substantially raises the bar for medical architecture and the jury hopes it could set new aspirations for the NHS; to which this building has been donated by the client.
A carefully considered atrium, with waiting rooms on the gallery levels, provides a calm, spa-like, welcoming environment to women and their partners. The client is a pioneering fetal surgeon, who has spent a substantial portion of his wealth on this legacy project.
The project attempts innovation at many scales. This includes the choice to declutter the consultation rooms to make for calmer, sleeker spaces. This is achieved by providing in-built furniture to house bins and medicines; replacing plastic curtains with curved solid wood partitions and using graphic-designed stainless-steel signage in place of standard templates. On a grander scale, the building incorporates state-of-the-art operating theatres, with video link-ups to a large auditorium, for teaching purposes. This installed technology allows for pioneering surgical techniques to be broadcast all over the world.
This building provided a truly innovative, aspirational building for the medical facilities of the future.
Contractor Gilbert Ash
Structural Engineers Design2e
Environmental/M&E Engineers Troup Bywaters + Anders
Quantity Surveyor/Cost Consultant Faithful+Gould
Project Management Buro Four
Acoustic Engineers Applied Acoustic Design
Landscape Architects Macgregor Smith
Internal Area 5390 m²
