Royal Edinburgh Hospital Phase 1
erz Landscape Architects were commissioned as part of the multi-disciplinary design team to prepare the master-plan for the redevelopment of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital campus in Morningside, Edinburgh and subsequently to design and oversee delivery of the first two phases of the project.
The first phase was completed in 2016 and is a £40 million, 50 hectare, acute mental health and brain injury facility. There is growing evidence that access or even a visual connection to the external environment can have a significant positive impact on mental health and recovery. In response to this the buildings are principally single storey with all bedrooms located on the ground floor. The seven wards are organised around a total of twenty courtyards and the ambition was to create a hospital environment where there was always a direct visual connection between the building users and the external landscape.
Each courtyard is contained within the building footprint (open to the sky only), with the internal circulation routes wrapping round the courtyards. This improves the visibility and surveillance of the external spaces whilst also improving the legibility and orientation of the building for patients and staff. Day spaces within each ward typically open to one edge of each courtyard to enable an easy indoor / outdoor transition and barrier free access for patients to a secure external environment.
Each ward is focused on a particular patient group, these include acute mental health, IPCU, older people’s mental health and brain Injury. The courtyard spaces essentially create a new realm of clinical and therapeutic space that complements the internal ward areas.
Parking, drop off and vehicular access have been carefully planned to separate pedestrian and vehicular traffic, integrate with the proposed master-plan and also to address the existing problems with parking management on the urban hospital site. The building is laid out to ensure that NHS Facilities Management can access the building with minimal overlap with the public.
Pedestrian routes have all been carefully considered to provide direct, safe and legible access routes to and from the buildings and out into the wider campus. This includes public realm improvements at the site and building entrances, street tree planting and the implementation of a shared surface cycle path.
Surrounding the phase one buildings, key elements of the estate landscape have been protected and reinforced. Notably the orchard (one of the few remaining large, long standing orchards in urban Scotland) has been retained and opened up as a usable space for patients and visitors.
