North Shore Hospital Lakeview Extension Wins Excellence Award
Tuesday 19 June 2012, 3:54PM
By Klein Architects
765 views
Waitemata District Health Board's new Lakeview Development has won an excellence award and was named 'best in category' for a special purpose property in the Property Council New Zealand, Rider Levett Bucknall Property Industry awards for 2012. The facility includes a new emergency department, assessment and diagnostic unit, radiology expansion and a comprehensive cardiology unit.
Klein Architects, designers of the Lakeview Development, are specialists in the design of hospitals and healthcare facilities with a long history of work on the North Shore Hospital site. They undertook extensive consultation with North Shore Hospital staff to design a facility that supports new processes to improve efficiency, staff and patient flow, resulting in greatly increased patient satisfaction.
Fletcher Interiors managed a complex construction process requiring five stages to ensure that the emergency department remained operational.
The accolade for the design of the facility, along with other quality initiatives implemented provide recognition for WDHB who have recently exceeded the national health target of having 95% of emergency department patients admitted, discharged or transferred in six hours or less, an improvement of over 30% on results from 3 years ago.
The building deals sensitively with its lakeside environment, and patients benefit with rooms oriented to have views across Lake Pupuke and maximum natural light.
Sustainable design features include rainwater harvesting and reuse for toilet flushing, heat recovery from the air conditioning plant and a highly efficient façade with low emissivity glass and external sunshades.
The building is designed structurally to ʻImportance Level 4ʼ to ensure it remains functional post-disaster.
Bed management and occupancy are more manageable across the whole hospital site with the new departments fully operational. The Cardiac Care Unit on the first level is now co-located on one floor with intensive care and the high dependency unit assisting with the provision of seamless service delivery.