The Waldron | HHbR

London / United Kingdom / 2010

5
5 Love 2,085 Visits Published

The Waldron health centre is located in the London Borough of Lewisham just north of London’s South Circular inner ring road. Physically, the area has been blighted by much Twentieth Century development in which housing estates and tower blocks populate a discontinuous landscape. That said, the site lies at the west end of a local pedestrian route - Douglas Way - and a string of local community facilities, public buildings and public open spaces from Deptford High St in the east to Fordham Park in the west. The site, a north-facing peninsula block, is bounded by streets on three sides. The immediate area is characterised by New Cross railway station which brings activity to Amersham Vale to the west, a tall 3-storey Victorian brick school building which dominates Stanley Street to the east, and allotments which occupy the southeast quadrant of the peninsula itself. The new centre replaces an anonymous single storey health centre. The design conceives of an Z-shaped building that occupies the northeast and southwest quadrants of the peninsula and frames two contrasting public spaces – one, the existing allotments, the other, a new square in the northwest quadrant which opens up a diagonal route to the station. The building rises from two storeys in the northeast to four – similar to the height of the school - in the southwest. Beneath, the square and west façade are framed by a canopy, concrete arcade and screen all of which invite proximity and provide a counterpoint in scale and material to the greater building mass. Above, storey-high words WALDRON, HEALTH and CENTRE rest on the screen, arcade and canopy. Seen together they constitute a useful sign, but, seen apart, as they often are, they play a part in the composition of each elevation and in the sculptural and material character of the whole. Where the arcade meets the screen a cube of concrete marks the entrance. The square is framed on two sides by shops and in due course will be completed by a 5-storey residential building with a café on the north side of the square. The site for the residential scheme has been sold to a developer. Inside, the plan is generated from the patient’s perspective. The design seeks to describe a narrative journey in five frames beginning with the square and leads inside first to a foyer, then cloister, waiting room and finally to a clinical room. The building is planned with two overlapping wings, north and south, separated by the 5-storey foyer. The foyer incorporates a piece – a modern day Bayeaux tapestry - by artist Martin Richman. Each wing accommodates two clinical clusters one of which can be accessed directly from the foyer, the second along a cloister that runs parallel to the wing bypassing the first. A court, into which both clusters’ waiting spaces look, separates the cloister and wing. The last leg of the journey from waiting room to consulting room is the shortest possible- patients enter the clinical corridor at the midpoint passing the least doors to reach the room.

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    The Waldron health centre is located in the London Borough of Lewisham just north of London’s South Circular inner ring road. Physically, the area has been blighted by much Twentieth Century development in which housing estates and tower blocks populate a discontinuous landscape. That said, the site lies at the west end of a local pedestrian route - Douglas Way - and a string of local community facilities, public buildings and public open spaces from Deptford High St in the east to...

    Project details
    • Year 2010
    • Work finished in 2010
    • Client Lewisham Primary Care Trust
    • Status Completed works
    • Type Hospitals, private clinics
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