The History
It has been called the “ugliest building in Liverpool”: a towering brutalist slab with near-permanent scaffolding in a sea of parking, the Royal Liverpool University Hospital has long needed a facelift.
“If you think of Liverpool 100 years ago,” says David Lewis from the project’s architects NBBJ, “you had the docks, and all these public and civic buildings. To the west, there was the university and beautiful residential squares. But when building the hospital, they took an urban block which had streets, schools and churches – and they flattened it to put in a 1970's hospital slab. It was detrimental to the city.”
Now, however, after more than a decade of delays, work has finally started on an ambitious £335m redevelopment of Merseyside’s largest hospital. And the ambition is not simply to tackle a building that has outstayed its usefulness; it is to make the whole city healthier and wealthier too.
The design is underpinned by the idea that nature and natural light will aid the healing process for patients, creating a hospital that is calmer and more pleasant for the city’s residents as well as its staff and patients.
The Explore
While up in Liverpool to check out the waste of time that was Alderhay, myself and @slayaaaa decide to find something high and interesting. Well here what we found
The new hospital covered in scaffolding appealed to us and up we went
Entry wasn’t too bad and the building itself was typical of a tower block with identical floors. Some floors where more equipped than others but with nothing real juicy in them to look at yet.
However we did find a map that pointed us towards a tunnel to the morgue. All excited we followed this map and after a bit realised that the tunnel we were in actually lead to the existing morgue, so promptly scraped that idea.
We ended up chilling on the roof for a bit while there and had a relaxing evening.
Enjoy the pics
. Cool report mate.
