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High-tech ‘dacha in the woods’ to treat Ukrainian children
The All-Ukrainian Mother and Child Healthcare Centre
UK, France & the Ukraine – In the spring of 2006, Kateryna Yuschenko, Head of the Supervisory Board for the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Foundation, and wife of the president of Ukraine, laid a capsule at the site of a future hospital — The All-Ukrainian Mother and Child Healthcare Centre.
The All Ukrainian Health Protection Centre for Mothers and Children will cover 10 hectares and contain departments for general paediatrics and surgery (in five surgery blocks), oncology, oncohaematology, and a peritoneal centre. A research and training centre is also planned for paediatric doctors, to help integrate Ukraine into the world medical community
Following a competition that involved seven architectural companies – based in Germany, Netherlands, Italy, the United Kingdom, USA, and the Ukraine itself – the selected architects for the new 250-bed children’s hospital are bdpgroupe6. ‘The objective is to build a children’s hospital with the most modern medical equipment and to organise a clinic facility that provides specialised, high tech medical care,’ explained Neil Cadenhead, Director of bdpgroupe6. ‘As architects and engineers, we have the ability to design it very sustainably. This appointment confirms that there is a demand for the very best of European hospital design in the international arena.’
The architectural firm BDP, with Groupe6, its associate practice in France, are regularly listed in the BD World Architecture top 10 healthcare architects. ‘We currently have healthcare buildings in design and construction of a value in excess US $4,527 million in addition to a large international commercial portfolio. The firms are growing and ambitious and have 12 offices in France, the UK and overseas,’ the company reports. ‘Our formalised association as bdpgroupe6 is to undertake international healthcare commissions and we are actively pursuing opportunities throughout the world, often using local collaborators.’
The winning architects designed a highly sustainable building sympathetic to the site, which is in a pretty forest on the edge of Kiev. ‘The new building separates the treatment and diagnostic areas from ward areas and buries the former block beneath a ‘green’ roof so that it merges with the forest floor. The ward blocks were inspired by the Ukrainian tradition of the dacha in the woods, re-interpreted within a modernist aesthetic,’ bdpgroupe6 explained
This article was published on 03/01/2008