New Cancer Centre at Guy’s Hospital wins two NLA awards

The Cancer Centre was built for the Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospital NHS trust, bringing together cancer services from across the two sites for the first time. All outpatient oncology services are now contained within the centre, which was funded by the provision of a private patient village at the top of the building. It gives patients a non-institutional setting in which to receive their care, drawing on RSHP’s experience building the Maggie’s Centre at Charing Cross hospital. Throughout the process, the patient was at the heart of the design, and a patient reference group was set up and consulted in an inclusive way at every stage.

The centre is broken down into human scaled “vertical villages”, one for each patient need – outpatient, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. However, these spaces have been designed to be flexible and can be converted for different purposes if and when cancer treatments change. It was designed to be energy efficient from the outset, clustering high energy use services in one part of the building, and utilising natural ventilation outside of the clinical spaces. Specially commissioned artworks aim to provide warmth to the patient environment, and there are laboratory spaces on the innovation floor.

The project was commended by several of the judges. Professor J Burney, Professor Planning and Placemaking at the Pratt Institute School of Architecture in New York, praised it for embracing the current trend of providing normative environments for cancer recovery. New London Architecture added that the project adds to what is an interesting and rapidly changing area around the Guy’s campus.