Denton Corker Marshall has unveiled designs for a “landmark” new building for Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital, overlooking Carlton Gardens.
Under the plans before Yarra City Council, the hospital’s existing 11-storey brick Aikenhead Wing on the corner of Victoria Parade and Nicholson Street would be demolished to make way for a new 11-storey building housing the Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery (ACMD).
Denton Corker Marshall’s design for the building aims to respond to the transitional urban context between the CBD, Carlton Gardens and the wider hospital precinct “by presenting a respectful building mass, and providing high levels of visual connectivity between surrounding context and the functions housed within.”
In a design statement, the practice described how the southern facade references the crystalline structures associated with ACMD biomedical research, while the western façade features abstract vignettes of the Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens.
The Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery by Denton Corker Marshall.
“The building mass is interrupted along the western elevation with the insertion of a cantilevered block, that signposts the western entry, whilst also providing protection from the elements,” the design statement reads. “A picture window within this block enhances the sense of connection lecture theatre occupants have to the Carlton Gardens. Recessed vision glass cutouts step up the building, further articulating the west and south elevations, enhancing visual connections and facilitating the integration of landscape balconies.”
Part of the Melbourne Biomedical Precinct, ACMD will be a translational medical technology research and training hub featuring laboratories, workshop and biofabrication facilities, start-up and industry spaces and education and conference facilities. It will unite eight partner research and academic institutions: St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, The University of Melbourne (UoM), St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research, Bionics Institute, Australian Catholic University, University of Wollongong, Swinburne University of Technology and RMIT University. The centre will have a focus on finding solutions for complex chronic diseases.
The site sits within a World Heritage Environs Area, set up to stop over-development near the Royal Exhibition Building, which was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2004. The development has raised concerns it will negatively impact the World Heritage value of the Royal Exhibition Building.
Friends of the Royal Exhibition Building spokesperson Margaret O’Brien told The Age the building “seems intent on dominating and distracting.”
“At 12-storeys of glass, and massing over an entire block, it is as an alien,” she said.
Chair of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria Charles Sowerwine told the paper that the existing building should never have been built in the 1950s and that the new design was “attention-seeking” and at odds with the area. “[It] represents a betrayal of what the Australian government promised UNESCO,” he said.
A heritage assessment report by Lovell Chen submitted in support of the application notes that the new building will have a similar footprint and number of levels to the existing Aikenhead Wing and would have a minor heritage impact only. “The proposal provides an appropriate contextual response to the South Fitzroy Precinct and Royal Eehibition Building [and] Carlton Gardens and supports the ongoing health and community use of the place as an important contributory place within the precinct,” it states.
A heritage building on the site erected in 1889, Brenan Hall, will have its rendered masonry façade with prominent arched gable parapet retained.
Costing $206 million, the building project is funded by the Victorian and federal governments as well as St Vincent’s Hospital and the other research partners.
Source: Architecture - architectureau
