Hopkins Architects’ Institute in the Park at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital is designed to embrace its staff and the wider public

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Richard Brine

Won in competition, Institute in the Park at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool by Hopkins Architect is dedicated to developing safer and more effective medicines for children and young people. Forming the first phase of the hospital’s Reasearch & Education facility, the 6,950 square metre scheme houses around 100 education, research and clinical staff.

The three-storey timber and glass facility is intended to provide a warm, innovative and non-institutional environment that increases public awareness of the institute’s activities. The project opens up to a future park landscape, that forms part of Hopkins’ masterplan.

Conceived as a serpentine extension of the park, the centrally-located curvilinear atrium brings daylight into the heart of the plan. The two-storey space is articulated by a series of open yet intimate meeting rooms, write-up areas and garden terraces. The corridor-free plan is designed to encourage interaction and collaboration between researchers and visitors, as well as establish connections between the adjacent hospital, park and wider neighbourhood.

Containing research and teaching laboratories, offices, meeting rooms, lecture theatres, breakout spaces, a cafe and library, the building’s primary functions are located in two modular wings that flank the atrium.

Designed to achieve BREEAM Excellent, the scheme features a wide range of active and passive environmental technologies, including a green roof, roof-mounted photovoltaics, GGBS concrete, chilled slabs, raised plenums for mixed-mode ventilation, chilled beams and low-energy fume cupboards in the laboratories, PIR sensors on all lighting, and a SUDS system.

The second phase of the project is due to start on site at the end of 2017 and will see the facility double in size by early 2018. This will provide additional meeting spaces, laboratories and lecture theatres as well as a central cafe for use across the campus.

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