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The huge high-level conservatory is a magnet for sunlight, fresh air and views into the neighbouring mature parks

Instead of a maze of narrow corridors, it has a conservatory the size of a football pitch beneath a great over-arching glass roof. Instead of artificial lighting, mechanical ventilation and a pervading claustrophobia, it has daylight, space, fresh air and wide vistas. Instead of insipid off-white wall panels and suspended ceilings, it has scarlet lift towers and depictions of fish, butterflies and birds and flowers set into the floors. And instead of an NHS hospital building, it has the appearance of a well-endowed private arts foundation.

Yet an NHS hospital building is precisely what it is. This is the 拢60m, 140-bed Evelina Children鈥檚 Hospital and it forms part of St Thomas鈥� Hospital just across the river from the Houses of Parliament. Its 16,000 m2 of floor area contains one of the most intensively equipped children鈥檚 hospitals in the country, with three operating theatres, an MRI scanner, kidney dialysis unit and 20 intensive care beds.

Acute hospital buildings present an acute design challenge.

As treatment for severe illnesses such as kidney or heart failure become ever more technically intensive, so do the buildings that must accommodate the treatment. But as more and more high-tech equipment is stuffed into the hospitals, the more intimidating they appear to the patients. For children, who are the among most vulnerable of healthcare patients, the problem is even more acute.

Evelina is a particularly inspired solution. The design is by an architect with no experience of hospital design, Hopkins Architects, and it was designed to answer a self-contradictory brief laid down by Ted Baker, the medical director of the NHS hospital trust, which was to create 鈥渁 hospital that does not feel like a hospital.鈥� This highly unorthodox approach was helped by 拢50m of funding from the hospital鈥檚 charitable trust, which was established by Edward VI. This allowed the usual NHS procurement routes to be circumvented: instead, the design was arrived at through a limited architectural competition.

鈥淲e were attracted to the Hopkins team, because they didn鈥檛 come up with preconceptions,鈥� says Baker. Right from the competition stage, the design process also involved extensive consultation with medical staff and even the hospital鈥檚 child patients themselves, who came up with remarkably enlightened suggestions. 鈥淣o long scary corridors,鈥� warned one, while a 13-year-old girl reasoned: 鈥淲hen I鈥檓 in hospital, I wish I were in the fresh air.鈥�

The building鈥檚 centrepiece is the great four-storey-high conservatory. Admittedly, it contains no high-tech equipment for medical treatment, but it does combine several key features of a healing environment. For a start, it serves as the social heart of the building. Its facilities include a school where children can continue their education in three or four classes separated by age group. Alongside that are a cafe where children can relax with their families and a playground that can stage special performances. A taster came last month, some five months before the hospital is due to open to patients, when the London Philharmonic Orchestra put on a concert for more than 100 local schoolchildren.

The conservatory is also the key to Hopkins鈥� architectural concept, which in the words of director Andy Barnett is of 鈥渁 building in the landscape鈥�. As viewed from outside, this seems like a severe case of architectural self-delusion, as there is barely a blade of grass in sight in the congested city-centre hospital complex, and even the river is shut off from view. Nor is there any view into the spacious conservatory, as this has been pushed upstairs to the third floor.

But when you at last arrive on the third floor, the landscape wooshes in dramatically. At this height, a mesmerisingly wide vista opens up over the adjoining main road and a high garden wall to the lush mature parkland of the Archbishop of Canterbury鈥檚 Lambeth Palace and a public park alongside it. As Barnett says, 鈥淲e鈥檝e borrowed the landscape from the parks.鈥�

Even the interior of the conservatory is more landscape than architecture, though it contains little planting. It is four storeys in height and surrounded on three sides by clear glass, which means that it fulfils the schoolgirl鈥檚 dream of standing on an open-air terrace. The effect is enhanced by fresh air ventilation and shafts of sunlight. Loose furniture and low screen partitions, which are currently being installed for the school and play area, add to the sense of spaciousness. Little wonder, then, that the conservatory floor has been dubbed The Beach.

The height of the conservatory brings another important benefit. Four floors of children鈥檚 wards are stacked up along one side behind a window wall. To those children who are confined to their beds, this offers unobstructed views of conservatory and the activities going on in it, as well as refreshing vistas of the parkland and open sky beyond.

The wards accommodate six, four or single beds. They come with neat melamine-faced bedheads that conceal all the necessary medical equipment and supplies. And to one side of each bed, an extra bed can be folded down to allow a parent to stay overnight.

There are no long dark corridors that could turn treatment into a daunting experience. After checking in at the child-height reception desk, a child and family reach their allotted ward by rising up through the conservatory on one of two scarlet lifts. From the lift landing, a short, curving, daylit vestibule leads them past a play area, where children can see others enjoying themselves.

The welcoming ambience is enhanced by a refreshing lack of signage. Conscious that a babel of 140 languages are spoken within the catchment area, the hospital uses pictorial symbols and colours instead of written signs to help patients find their way around the hospital. These symbols were designed by a storyteller and artists, and in the spirit of the fresh air and daylight, the natural world was adopted as the overall theme for the building. Each floor represents a different aspect of nature, from the ocean on the ground floor to the sky on the sixth. Easily recognisable symbols for each aspect of nature, such as a fish for the ocean, a leaf for the forest and a bird for the sky, have been inlaid into the linoleum flooring. In addition, the decor for each floor is in its appropriate colour, from blue for the ocean to purple for the night sky.

The three lowest floors occupy the full width of the site. However, large gaps in the floor of the conservatory draw daylight down into these deep-plan areas. As for the medical treatment areas themselves, the three operating theatres, recovery unit and 20-bed intensive care unit are all combined on the capacious second floor. As Baker points out, 鈥淎ll the sickest patients are brought together on the same floor,鈥� making for efficient use of specialist staff and equipment. For the same reason, this intensive floor is connected by a bridge link to the operating theatres of the main hospital on the same level. The ground and first floors house the MRI scanner, day centre and outpatient department.

Talking about the building as a whole, Baker enthuses: 鈥淚t鈥檚 so bright, light and airy that children coming here will have something to look forward to. And because it makes them feel better, they鈥檒l recover better too. So it really is a healing environment.鈥�

A lesson that more mature heads than schoolchildren have still to learn.

Evelina Children鈥檚 Hospital project team

client Guy鈥檚 & St Thomas鈥� NHS Foundation Trust
architect Hopkins Architects
healthcare strategist Rawlinson Kelly Whittlestone
structural engineer and fire safety consultant Buro Happold
services engineer Hoare Lea Consulting Engineers
employer鈥檚 agent and quantity surveyor Davis Langdon
design-and-build contractor Gleeson