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Inclusive design and easy access aid patient dignity at St David's Hospice

  • Café with landscaped garden linking to the existing hospice. MacEwen Award 2019 shortlisted KKE’s St David’s Hospice Inpatient Unit, Newport, Wales.
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    Café with landscaped garden linking to the existing hospice. MacEwen Award 2019 shortlisted KKE’s St David’s Hospice Inpatient Unit, Newport, Wales. Credit: Ståle Eriksen
  • Day room. MacEwen Award 2019 shortlisted KKE’s St David’s Hospice Inpatient Unit, Newport, Wales.
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    Day room. MacEwen Award 2019 shortlisted KKE’s St David’s Hospice Inpatient Unit, Newport, Wales. Credit: Ståle Eriksen
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KKE’s new St David’s Hospice Care In-Patient Unit in Newport, Wales, has won a slew of awards, including the RSAW Client of the Year, and this year’s MacEwen judges felt it deserved a place here too.

The new unit, KKE's second building for St David’s, provides 15 en-suite bedrooms supported by communal spaces, a day room, clinical offices, bathrooms and café. Set out in an L-shape on the top of a mound over the town in the foothills of the Brecon Beacons, it is designed to provide optimum views from the patients' bedrooms over a large landscaped garden. A battered dry-stone gabion retaining wall creates a ground level close to the building and enables level access directly from both the day room and bedrooms so patients can be taken out to enjoy the fresh air.

  • Main entrance. MacEwen Award 2019 shortlisted KKE’s St David’s Hospice Inpatient Unit, Newport, Wales.
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    Main entrance. MacEwen Award 2019 shortlisted KKE’s St David’s Hospice Inpatient Unit, Newport, Wales. Credit: Ståle Eriksen
  • The building is set out in an L-shape, to allow the patient bedroom views over the garden. MacEwen Award 2019 shortlisted KKE’s St David’s Hospice Inpatient Unit, Newport, Wales.
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    The building is set out in an L-shape, to allow the patient bedroom views over the garden. MacEwen Award 2019 shortlisted KKE’s St David’s Hospice Inpatient Unit, Newport, Wales. Credit: Ståle Eriksen
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Inclusive design is at the heart of the hospice’s brief. Accessibility is a priority as it affects the dignity of patients, a central focus of the hospice’s work, and is the reason why most of the building is at ground level. The newly landscaped surrounding area consists of a wild flower meadow planted with native trees that provides a tranquil, ecologically enhanced environment accessible for patients, carers, visitors, staff and volunteers alike.

Judge Yuli Cadney-Toh particularly enjoyed the way KKE had created a non-institutional feel to the interior in a highly hygienic healthcare setting.

See more of the MacEwen here

Credits

Main contractor Andrew Scott

Consultant structural & civil engineer Structural Solutions

M&E contractor Whiteheads

Quantity surveyor Rhomco

Interior designer Elaine Lewis Designs

Consultant M&E engineer Holloway Partnerships

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