King George Hospital

• Turning a courtyard within hospital buildings into a haven for staff and patients.
• Design sensitive to the privacy of surrounding clinics and offices.
• Successful implementation resulting in further landscaping at the hospital.

Our design work on King George Hospital in Ilford, London was to landscape a courtyard within the hospital buildings. The courtyard was used by staff and visitors and the design needed to be sensitive to the location next to clinics and confidential offices alongside the courtyard. The hospital wanted staff and patients to be involved in choosing the landscape design so we drew up three different schemes for people to comment on. These schemes gave a different emphasis to the use of the space and the options, guided by the hospital brief, were wacky, fun, and low maintenance. The preferred option was the fun design and this is the one we took through to build. The scheme featured a strong use of colour as a contrast to the surrounding buildings with a Perspex pergola throwing colours onto the paving. We also installed a low maintenance deck and a coloured Perspex screen alongside the office windows to extend the design and aid privacy without limiting the use of the space. This created a quiet haven within the hospital environment for the enjoyment of staff and patients and led to further work at the hospital on the design of a restful garden for cancer patients.