As a teaching hospital and referral centre, Newcastle’s John Hunter Hospital services New South Wales’ largest and most geographically dispersed health district. In 2019, Health Infrastructure NSW appointed BVN to design a major redevelopment of the hospital’s New Lambton Heights site to address population growth and changing medical needs across the region.

In addition to complex medical and technical requirements, the client provided an “emotional design brief” that empowered the design team to focus on the daily experiences that impact patients, staff and carers. Access to nature and space, safety, security, integrity and privacy became the guiding themes for the project, encouraging a focus on creating the best possible patient, visitor and staff experiences.

The masterplanning task involved locating a large new clinical services building and multi-storey car park and connecting them to the existing hospital while separating vehicle flows and retaining natural bushland. The topographical constraints of the narrow ridgetop site and the presence of underground mine shafts presented significant challenges. The solution that best balanced the competing demands of context and brief was a seven-storey facility atop a four-level car park.

The large rectangular floor plate of the new building runs roughly parallel to the existing hospital, facing north-east across bushland towards the suburbs of Newcastle. Two east-west streets provide cross connections through the hospital. Both intersect with the new entry, which passes through a gap created in the existing building. The completed composition offers clear legibility and wayfinding, while the combination of the entry pavilion, elevated bridge and new circulation routes has produced a unified complex with efficient clinical relationships and logistical efficiencies.

An elevated public garden fills the space between the two buildings. The idea for the garden germinated throughout the consultation process that developed the emotional design brief. It is an intrinsic part of the design, providing a central social space with retail, waiting areas and access to the outdoors.

BVN leant heavily on discussions with traditional owners, the Awabakal people, to understand their history with the site. Pathways and a variety of gardens and resting places provide all users with access to the natural landscape while connecting to an important Indigenous pathway known around the hospital grounds as Uncle Bob’s Track or ‘Yallarwah Walk’.

Fundamental to the health district’s 2030 carbon neutral goal was repurposing areas vacated for the new building and integrating them into the revitalised hospital. Passive design through orientation, harnessing light, natural ventilation and integrated sunshading contribute to reducing energy consumption. Space for multiple-stream waste separation has been integrated and material selections consider environmental impacts in manufacture and transportation.

BVN’s solution for John Hunter provides expanded and improved healthcare services in a place where joy and wellbeing have contributed equally to rationality and efficiency in reinventing the experience for patients, visitors and medical staff.