Royal Haskoning to design building services for new National Children's Oncology Centre
The NKOC has already carried out a prior investigation into the psychosocial aspects that a children’s hospital should include. This helped to establish the starting points for creating the ideal environment for the young patients, who will be aged anything up to 18 years. The overall design should ensure that patients and parents alike will have as comfortable a stay as possible; the design of the building installations (heating, lighting, ventilation system, etc.) is entirely in keeping with this requirement. Patients will be able to regulate and control their own heating, lighting and ventilation, thereby providing them a significant degree of freedom and making their stay as comfortable as possible. All the items associated with a hospital environment (tubes, cables, connection points) will be kept out of sight as much as possible: this will make the clinical surroundings seem more ‘homely’. Attention has also been paid to more quirky features, such as transparent rain pipes and rotatable ventilation grills positioned low on the walls, all with the intention of providing distractions. There has also been an extra focus on how children of different ages perceive their surroundings.
NKOC is also keen to have a building that is sustainable. The energy consumption levels of the building will be kept as low as possible. Options will also be examined for having a flexible building layout, thereby allowing any future changes that may be necessary to be made simply and without too many extra materials.
Following a European tendering procedure, Royal Haskoning was the unanimous choice of the NKOC as the advisor for the building installations of its planned children’s hospital and research centre. The location that has been chosen is close to both a university children’s hospital (Wilhelmina Kinderziekenhuis) and adult cancer centre (UMC Utrecht Cancer Center).
Photo: LIAG architects and building consultants©