London Institute for Healthcare Engineering
London Institute for Healthcare Engineering
We provided conservation and transport advice for a major new £32m healthcare technology building which is part of the vision for St Thomas’ MedTech Hub, a joint initiative led by King’s School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.
The new building has been embedded within St Thomas’ campus and brings together King’s research excellence, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust’s leading clinical practice and the medtech sector’s commercial innovation power and talent, engaging multinationals, SMEs and start-ups simultaneously.
We provided conservation and transport advice for this major new research facility within a sensitive hospital site. The site is flanked by the Grade II listed buildings of St Thomas’s Hospital and is within the Albert Embankment Conservation Area. Our heritage assessment informed the development of proposals from an early stage.
We supported pre-application discussions with the London Borough of Lambeth and produced a Views Assessment, taking account of key views from bridges and from the Palace of Westminster, and then assisted the project to develop in and around a functioning hospital site.
Our transport work focused on emergency vehicle access to the site. We advised that existing arrangements allowed barrier-controlled access from Lambeth Palace Road via a service road used by fire tenders, but that the current geometry caused vehicle overruns. Our proposed scheme realigned the service road to account for the slightly enlarged building footprint, with improved fire tender tracking providing improved manoeuvrability but requiring a further setback at the southwest corner and consideration of road gradients. We resolved outstanding issues alongside the design team and engaged with London Borough of Lambeth to ultimately secure consent for the scheme.
The project went on to win a RIBA London Award.
Client: King’s College London
Architects: HLM Architects